------- Index of Articles
NUCLEAR
Missile Conference Opens in Paris
New Twist on Physicist's Role in Nazi Bomb
New Hampshire seeks radiation sickness pills
Health Departments to Oversee Distribution of Anti-Radiation Pills
China's First Domestically-Designed Nuclear Power Plant Operational
Dutch Petten research nuke plant to shut
Israel Emphasizes Iranian Threat
Lawmakers Seek NKorea Rethinking
Missile Conference Opens in Paris
Study: Radiation Caused Mutations
Nuclear Tests, Fallout Boosted DNA Mutation Rates
Russia Rips CIA Report on Technology
Russia Praises U.S. Stand on Arms Pact
Chernobyl Advocates Denounce U.N.
Bush Expected to OK Waste Site
Nevadans Press Bush on Nuclear Waste Site
Nevada officials press Bush on Yucca Mt.
MILITARY
U.S. paid off warlords
U.S. Frees 27 Afghans Held in Raid
U.S. Missile May Have Hit Al Qaeda
U.S., French navies lead Africa training
Russian arms sales to India flourish
China buys U.S. satellite data to target Taiwan
Beijing's alternate realities
U.S. Plan Aims to Stem Pipeline's Flow of Trouble
Khamenei: Iran Would Make U.S. Regret Any Attack
U.S. eyes unilateral action on Saddam
Iraqi Military Still Has Some Punch
Taking on the evil axis
Powell: Regime Change Needed in Iraq
Arabs Seen Rebuffing Cheney on Targeting Iraq
Sharon Renews Offer of Statehood
Israel Launches Missile Strike at Palestinian Complex
'Small, strong ally'
Russian Copter Crashes in Chechnya
Space Transformation Transcript
CIA warns of new al Qaeda threat
Tenet: Warns of Worsening Economy
Fresh U.S. Air Strikes Stoke Bin Laden Speculation
POLICE / PRISONERS
Fact and myth about prisoners of war
Security tightened for treks to Mecca
D.C. students well-armed at school
Captives Resist U.S. Questioning
Geneva Convention to Be Applied to Captured Taliban Fighters
U.S. Seeks to Defuse Criticism on War Captives
Mexican Activists Denounce Shooting
ENERGY AND OTHER
EPA memo said White House energy plan 'misleading'
AES to Dump Its Weakest Plants
IMF's Stony Silence On Austerity Plans Worries Argentina
ACTIVISTS
Activist Granted Retrial in Egypt
Israeli Peace Camp Advocates Pullout
VERMONT DEFEATS PRO-STAR WARS RESOLUTION
-------- NUCLEAR
Missile Conference Opens in Paris
By Pamela Sampson
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; 11:58 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38955-2002Feb7?language=printer
PARIS -- Representatives from 78 countries - including nuclear rivals India and Pakistan - are meeting in Paris for two days to help produce a set of international guidelines aimed at curbing the proliferation of ballistic missiles.
Gerard Errera, the French Foreign Ministry's deputy director of political affairs, said in opening the conference Thursday that he hoped the 'International Code of Conduct against the Proliferation of Ballistic Missiles' would become an important instrument in the quest for world stability and peace.
"The fact that so many accepted our invitation is a reason for optimism," he said. "This is a sign that the international community has assessed the challenges that are tied to the development - qualitative and quantitative - of ballistic capabilities."
The goal of the conference is to solicit feedback from participants on a proposed code of conduct that would recognize the need to curb missile proliferation and share information about missile testing. The code would also call on nations to exercise "maximum restraint" in the development and deployment of ballistic missiles.
The code was first proposed by French President Jacques Chirac in June 2000 and then drawn up by the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international pact that tries to discourage the export of weapons of mass destruction.
According to the MTCR, a ballistic missile is one that is capable of delivering a 1,102-pound payload to a target more than 186 miles away. Ballistic missiles raise the specter of mass destruction because they can carry nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
Conference participants include the five original nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China - and three nations that have tested nuclear weapons or are believed to be capable of doing so: India, Pakistan and Israel.
According to French diplomatic sources, only two countries refused invitations: North Korea and Syria. Iraq, which is under U.N. sanctions for failing to cooperate with U.N inspectors trying to verify that Baghdad has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction, was not invited.
----
New Twist on Physicist's Role in Nazi Bomb
By JAMES GLANZ
February 7, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/science/07BOMB.html
The leader of Hitler's atomic bomb program, Werner Heisenberg, portrayed himself after World War II as a kind of scientific resistance hero who sabotaged Hitler's efforts to build a nuclear weapon.
But in a series of letters and other documents made public yesterday, his friend and onetime mentor, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, said that is not so.
Bohr, who died 40 years ago, said that under his beloved protégé, "everything was being done in Germany to develop atomic weapons."
In particular, the documents describe a meeting that Heisenberg initiated between the two men in occupied Denmark in September 1941.
After the war, Heisenberg said he traveled to Copenhagen to share his qualms about nuclear weapons. But the papers, released by the Bohr family and posted on the Niels Bohr Web site, www.nba.nbi.dk, which is maintained by the Niels Bohr Archive, tell a different story.
Heisenberg did not travel to Copenhagen for the 1941 meeting to express moral qualms about building an atomic weapon in wartime or to suggest that physicists on both sides of the conflict should refuse to do so, according to a passage in a letter Bohr wrote to Heisenberg, but never sent.
He was moved to write his letter, the authenticity of which seems beyond doubt, in 1957 when he read "Brighter Than a Thousand Suns," a history of the atomic bomb, in which Heisenberg is quoted offering his defense of his wartime role.
"You said that there was no need to talk about details," Bohr said, "since you were completely familiar with them and had spent the past two years working more or less exclusively on such preparations."
Though historians and scientists agree that Bohr broke off the meeting in shock, they have debated for decades what actually happened that day. Did Heisenberg hope to save the world from the horrors of the bomb, or was he really trying to pry loose information on the parallel effort by the Allies, which Bohr later joined?
The mystery is the center of an award-winning play, "Copenhagen," by the British playwright Michael Frayn. The play was inspired by a 1993 book by the journalist Thomas Powers, "Heisenberg's War," which argues that Heisenberg destroyed the German project from within.
The revelation made public yesterday "pretty much knocks that out of the water," said Dr. David C. Cassidy, a historian of science at Hofstra University who is the author of "Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg." "Heisenberg was working full blast on getting as far as he could on nuclear fission, including a bomb."
But others say questions about the meeting remain. One of Heisenberg's sons, Dr. Jochen Heisenberg, who is now a physicist at the University of New Hampshire, and Mr. Powers, say the documents show that Bohr never understood the message Heisenberg meant to convey in Copenhagen.
Even Dr. Hans Bethe, the Nobel laureate who is one of the last surviving physicists of the Manhattan Project, said yesterday he believed that technical misunderstandings between the physicists on what was then the cutting edge of science caused them to talk straight past each other.
"Bohr's letter does not clarify anything about the visit," Dr. Bethe said. "One talked with one set of assumptions and the other with a totally different set of assumptions."
But theirs is a minority view among historians of science. "It is in some way appropriate that Frayn's play was initiated by his reading of Thomas Powers's book," said Dr. Gerald Holton, an emeritus professor of physics and of history of science at Harvard. "It is clear that both of them, now that we know Bohr's report, are essentially fiction."
The history of the documents and the physicists they involve is nearly as interesting as the subject matter they contain.
The two men met when Bohr gave a talk in Göttingen, Germany, in 1922, by which time he was already known as the major theorist of the atom. "Suddenly, up jumps a cheeky pup and tells me that my mathematics is wrong," the character Bohr recalls in Mr. Frayn's play.
It was a 20-year-old Heisenberg, asking critical questions from the audience. Bohr approached him afterward, took him on as a protégé and together, they all but revolutionized physics in the 1920's, playing a central role in the development of quantum mechanics, the science of the very small.
But after their encounter in Copenhagen, Bohr broke off nearly all contact with his former protégé. He escaped from occupied Denmark in 1943 and made his way to England and then to Los Alamos, N.M.
No one knows why Bohr never sent the letter that was made public yesterday. Perhaps the usually soft-spoken Bohr regretted its strong language. But in characteristic fashion, he dictated further drafts and notes on the subject five years later. They appear in the handwriting of his wife, Margrethe, of various assistants and of his son Aage Bohr, another Nobel laureate. (In the play, the character Margrethe complains lovingly about the endless drafts she types for her husband, a deep thinker who was known to revise physics papers as many as 100 times before publishing them.)
Dr. Finn Aaserud, director of the Niels Bohr Archive in Copenhagen, said yesterday that the handwriting of all three had been identified as authentic, leaving little doubt that the documents are genuine.
In an interview, Mr. Powers said he wished Bohr had sent the letter to Heisenberg, so that the German physicist could have responded to its charges. "My overwhelming impression was one of sadness that they had never been sent," Mr. Powers said.
Bohr died in 1962, and during a conference on his work in Copenhagen in 1985, Erik Bohr, another of Bohr's sons, approached Dr. Holton and two others - the physicist Dr. Abraham Pais and the presidential adviser McGeorge Bundy, both now dead - with the first letter, asking for advice on what should be done with it.
Dr. Holton, who until now has been under a pledge of secrecy regarding the contents of the letter, said all three strongly recommended that the letter be preserved. The family agreed, but because of the nature of the contents, decided that none of the documents on the meeting would be released until 2012, 50 years after Bohr's death.
But in a talk during a conference on Mr. Frayn's play at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in March 2000, Dr. Holton revealed that the letter existed. And with the play - a hit in London and New York - interest in the letter mounted, said Dr. Vilhelm A. Bohr, a grandson of Niels Bohr, and a molecular biologist at the National Institutes of Health in Baltimore.
"There was such an active debate about it and we didn't want to hold up anything that could be of interest to the historians," Dr. Bohr said. "There's nothing that we need to hide here."
Despite the apparent clarity of the recollections in the letters, said Dr. Jochen Heisenberg, Bohr may have been confused by the militaristic, pro-German statements he assumes his grandfather was required to make in public.
In the letters, Dr. Heisenberg said, Bohr does not distinguish "between what my father said in official places and what he said in private." Perhaps Bohr became so angered by those public statements that he did not listen clearly when the two men spoke privately, Dr. Heisenberg said.
Although Dr. Vilhelm Bohr takes exception to Mr. Frayn's portrayal of his own grandparents in certain respects - he said that his grandmother Margrethe was not nearly so outspoken as she is drawn - he still likes the physics-saturated play. And he said the newly released documents would do nothing to change that.
"I still the think the show is very well done," Dr. Bohr said. "People come away very challenged."
-------- accidents
New Hampshire seeks radiation sickness pills
USA: February 7, 2002
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14409/story.htm
CONCORD - New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen asked the federal government this week for a supply of radiation sickness pills as a precaution for state residents living near nuclear power plants.
New Hampshire officials asked for 350,000 pills for the approximately 150,000 people near the Seabrook Station nuclear plant and 25,000 people near the Vermont Yankee plant. Vermont Yankee is in Vermont, but close to the New Hampshire border.
"We believe it makes sense to take steps to ensure that everyone living near Seabrook Station and Vermont Yankee has access to potassium iodide in the event of an emergency," Shaheen said in a statement.
The drug has been shown to protect the body's thyroid gland if taken soon after radiation exposure. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Agency said in December it would make the pills available to states that want to stockpile them.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, the issue of nuclear power plant safety has received heightened attention because an attack could spew radiation over a wide area.
The Nuclear Control Institute, an activist group, said a direct hit by a large passenger jet would probably penetrate the thick concrete walls that protect a nuclear plant's reactor.
----
Health Departments to Oversee Distribution of Anti-Radiation Pills
By Raymond McCaffrey and Michael Amon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 7, 2002; Page SM02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29975-2002Feb5?language=printer
Local health departments will oversee the distribution of potassium iodide pills to help residents guard against radiation poisoning in the event of an accident at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, a state official reported this week.
Though Maryland still has not received the pills from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it has met with "health officers and emergency managers from the five jurisdictions" affected, in an attempt to figure out how to get the medication to residents within a 10-mile radius of nuclear power plants, according to Michael Sharon, chief of the emergency response division at the state Department of the Environment.
St. Mary's County health officer William B. Icenhower told county commissioners on Tuesday that an emergency at Calvert Cliffs could pose a danger to all of the county's residents, not just those within the 10-mile emergency zone.
Icenhower recommended that all county residents, and especially children, who are most susceptible to thyroid cancer, receive potassium iodide pills.
"I myself would like to have potassium iodide, if I was more than 10 miles away," Icenhower said.
The state will receive about 160,000 doses of potassium iodide, which can help prevent thyroid damage, or two pills for each of the 80,000 residents who live within 10 miles of a nuclear facility, according to the state. Three-fourths of those individuals live in Calvert, St. Mary's and Dorchester counties, within 10 miles of Calvert Cliffs, the state's only nuclear power plant. The remaining residents live in Harford and Cecil counties, near the Peach Bottom nuclear facility in Pennsylvania.
The distribution plan, according to officials, could involve handing out pills at a central location, such as a local school, or delivering them door to door.
"Final authority rests with those local governments -- those local health officers," Sharon said. "We're still working on the methods.
"My sense is we're going to attempt to reach a consensus across all five counties. We're looking at targeting critical populations, specifically probably schoolchildren, retirement centers, critical populations like that."
Maryland's decision to accept the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's offer of the medication represents a policy change for the state, which has strictly advocated evacuation and sheltering in response to a nuclear plant emergency, but has not stockpiled potassium iodide for residents.
The cost of distributing the pills is unknown.
-------- china
China's First Domestically-Designed Nuclear Power Plant Operational
Thursday, February 07, 2002
People's Daily (China)
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200202/06/eng20020206_90056.shtml
The first generating unit of the second-phase project of Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Haiyan County, in east China's Zhejiang province, was completed and brought into the local power grid Wednesday.
The first generating unit of the second-phase project of Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant in Haiyan County, in east China's Zhejiang province, was completed and brought into the local power grid Wednesday.
This is China's first domestically-designed and constructed nuclear power plant and it marks a milestone in the development ofthe country's nuclear power technology, experts said.
The total investment of the second-phase project amounts to 14.8 billion yuan (1.79 billion U.S. dollars) and from June 2002 it aims to send four billion kwh of power annually to the east China power grid.
The second-phase project of Qinshan nuclear power plant startedoperation in 1996.
The first-phase project of the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant is in sound condition after 10 years of safe operation. Over the pastdecade, the plant has produced nearly 17 billion kilowatt-hours ofelectricity.
-------- europe
Dutch Petten research nuke plant to shut
NETHERLANDS: February 7, 2002
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14427/story.htm
AMSTERDAM - The European Commission's nuclear research reactor in Petten will shut down temporarily pending an inspection, operator Nuclear Research and Consultancy Group (NRG) said this week.
It was not yet known when the high flux reactor at the plant, known as the Joint Research Centre, would be restarted, NRG said.
"We do hope (the shutdown) will be as short as possible," NRG spokeswoman Juliette Jenniskens said.
Dutch environment minister Jan Pronk had requested a shutdown to investigate a crack in the reactor's internal casing. The plant is owned by the Dutch government but is leased to the EC for research.
The crack had been discovered when the casing was installed in 1984, but a new inspection technology had given differing readings from previous checks, Jenniskens said.
New checks would be performed to determine if there had been any growth in the crack, she added.
The plant is one of three reactors which provide radioactive isotopes to hospitals for medical treatments in Europe, raising concerns that a long shutdown could threaten treatments for some seven million cancer patients.
"There is a possibility that there could be a shortage" of the radioactive isotopes, Jenniskens said, because the two other reactors in Belgium and France are currently undergoing maintenance.
-------- israel
Israel Emphasizes Iranian Threat
On U.S. Visit, Sharon Expected to Warn of Weapons Activity
By Alan Sipress
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35510-2002Feb6?language=printer
As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arrives today for a White House visit, Israeli officials are redoubling efforts to warn the Bush administration that Iran poses a greater threat than the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
A series of Israeli leaders have carried that message to Washington recently in the hope of influencing a debate that has centered not on Iran but on whether to pursue the overthrow of the Iraqi government. Sharon's visit, however, comes a week after President Bush focused attention on Iran by including it in his State of the Union address as a member of an "axis of evil" with Iraq and North Korea. During meetings here yesterday, including with Vice President Cheney, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer warned of the hazards posed by Iranian support for terrorist groups and development of advanced weapons.
"Today, everybody is busy with Iraq," Ben-Eliezer said in an interview. "Iraq is a problem. . . . But you should understand, if you ask me, today Iran is more dangerous than Iraq."
He pointed to Iran's role in the scheme to smuggle 50 tons of weapons into Palestinian hands. American and Israeli intelligence officials have concluded Iran provided the weapons and worked with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to transport them by sea to Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat's administration. The ship was intercepted by Israeli commandos in the Red Sea a month ago.
Ben-Eliezer stressed his concerns about Iran's pursuit of missiles capable of striking Israel with chemical and biological weapons. He said Iran is on schedule to develop a nuclear bomb by 2005.
When Sharon meets with Bush and other U.S. officials today, he plans to sound the alarm about Tehran's ambitions in Lebanon, according to Israeli officials. Israel has accused Iran of dispatching Iranian Revolutionary Guards to foment anti-Israel activity in Lebanon and of providing thousands of missiles to Hezbollah. Iranian and Lebanese leaders had denied these charges.
Though Israeli officials have few kind words for Saddam Hussein, they see him posing less of a threat than Iran after more than a decade of U.N. sanctions and international isolation. But these officials are apprehensive about the price they might pay if the United States seeks to overthrow Hussein and he retaliates by striking Israel.
"I think we are going to be one of the first targets," Ben-Eliezer said.
He said Israeli officials were raising these concerns with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others in the administration, discussing what steps could be taken to ensure Israeli security in case of a U.S. military thrust against Iraq. Some Middle East analysts have said the United States might have to dispatch troops to western Iraq to hunt down scud missiles, like those Baghdad fired at Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.
"Definitely we are here to exchange some views about what we are expecting, or thinking about how they can defend, or some move that can guarantee the effect will be minimal," Ben-Eliezer said. He said these measures include coordination with the United States concerning troop deployments and anti-missile systems.
Testifying before a House committee yesterday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had tough words for Iraq, saying the Bush administration continues to support Hussein's ouster regardless of whether the Iraqi leader allows U.N. weapons inspectors to return. Baghdad offered this week to start talking to the United Nations "without preconditions" about deadlock over weapons inspectors, who have been barred by Iraq for three years.
"Notwithstanding how that unfolds, we still have a U.S. policy of regime change because we believe Saddam Hussein should move on and that the Iraqi people deserve better leadership," Powell said. He said the task of overthrowing Hussein "is something the United States . . . might have to do alone."
Powell's comments about Iran were less foreboding and left open the possibility of dialogue.
"We're making it clear to the Iranians that you've got to choose," he said. "If you want to be part of a world that's moving forward, it's time to stop being a state sponsor of terrorism, get out of the 'axis of evil' column."
-------- korea
Lawmakers Seek NKorea Rethinking
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 7, 2002; 5:15 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40898-2002Feb7?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- Three House members are calling on President Bush to reconsider a 1994 U.S. commitment to help provide North Korea with two light water nuclear reactors.
The three - Reps. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., Christopher Cox, R-Calif., and Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said in a letter to Bush that the U.S. commitment needs to be reevaluated in light of the threats Bush identified in his State of the Union address last month.
As part of a 1994 agreement with North Korea, the United States has been providing heavy fuel to that country to help cover energy needs before the light water reactors are installed.
Congress insisted that the White House certify that North Korea was not developing nuclear weapons as a condition for providing the U.S. assistance. The president also has the authority to waive the requirement.
The letter to Bush, signed on Tuesday, said, "In light of your strong statement in your State of the Union address regarding North Korea, we suspect that the facts do not support you making this certification."
In that speech, Bush identified North Korea as part of an "axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."
Administration officials indicated before the speech that no cutoff of funds was being considered. Congress has appropriated $90.5 million for fuel deliveries this year.
As part of the 1994 agreement, North Korea froze its nuclear weapons program. A U.S.-led international consortium was assigned the task of replacing Pyongyang's plutonium-producing reactors with the safer light water models.
-------- missile defense
Missile Conference Opens in Paris
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-France-Missile-Code.html
PARIS (AP) -- Representatives from 78 countries -- including nuclear rivals India and Pakistan -- are meeting in Paris for two days to help produce a set of international guidelines aimed at curbing the proliferation of ballistic missiles.
Gerard Errera, the French Foreign Ministry's deputy director of political affairs, said in opening the conference Thursday that he hoped the 'International Code of Conduct against the Proliferation of Ballistic Missiles' would become an important instrument in the quest for world stability and peace.
``The fact that so many accepted our invitation is a reason for optimism,'' he said. ``This is a sign that the international community has assessed the challenges that are tied to the development -- qualitative and quantitative -- of ballistic capabilities.''
The goal of the conference is to solicit feedback from participants on a proposed code of conduct that would recognize the need to curb missile proliferation and share information about missile testing. The code would also call on nations to exercise ``maximum restraint'' in the development and deployment of ballistic missiles.
The code was first proposed by French President Jacques Chirac in June 2000 and then drawn up by the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international pact that tries to discourage the export of weapons of mass destruction.
According to the MTCR, a ballistic missile is one that is capable of delivering a 1,102-pound payload to a target more than 186 miles away. Ballistic missiles raise the specter of mass destruction because they can carry nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.
Conference participants include the five original nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- and three nations that have tested nuclear weapons or are believed to be capable of doing so: India, Pakistan and Israel.
According to French diplomatic sources, only two countries refused invitations: North Korea and Syria. Iraq, which is under U.N. sanctions for failing to cooperate with U.N inspectors trying to verify that Baghdad has dismantled its weapons of mass destruction, was not invited.
-------- russia
Study: Radiation Caused Mutations
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/health/AP-Fallout-Mutations.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Radiation from Soviet atomic bomb testing caused gene mutations in families living nearby, according to a new study, but researchers say it is not known if the genetic changes caused adverse health effects.
The study, appearing Friday in the journal Science, gives new evidence that low-dose radiation from atomic bomb fallout can cause genetic mutation that can be passed to a new generation, but the study did not find any health consequences from these DNA changes, experts say.
A group of European researchers led by Yuri E. Dubrova of the University of Leicester took blood samples from 40 families in an area of Kazakstan not far from the Semipalatinsk site where the former Soviet Union conducted atomic bomb tests.
For a control group, the researchers took blood samples from 28 families in a geographically similar region of Kazakstan that had not been exposed to radiation from the tests.
Members of the study group and the control group were matched by year of birth, occupation and ethnicity.
The researchers then checked DNA of the two groups for evidence of mutations that could have been passed from one generation to another.
For the generation exposed to radiation from bomb tests in 1949, 1951, 1953 and 1956, the study found a mutation rate that was about 80 percent higher than in the corresponding generation in the control group.
In the children of the exposed generation, the researchers found a mutation rate about 50 percent greater than in the group that had not been exposed to radiation.
All the mutations were found in what is known as ``junk DNA,'' bits of genetic material that have no known function.
``These are mutations, but not in critical genes and there is not anything that we can correlate with a health effect,'' said Dr. William F. Morgan, director of the Radiation Oncology Research Laboratory at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Morgan, who reviewed the study for Science, said the findings give new understanding of how ionizing radiation, such as from an atomic bomb and its fallout, can affect successive generations.
Most of what is known about such radiation effects comes from survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during World War II. Those survivors were exposed to a single, severe dose of radiation. No inherited mutations were found in that group, said Morgan, but it was rare that both parents in the Japanese bombings were equally exposed.
In the new study, he said, ``they are finding that if you live in an environment that is contaminated where you are continuously exposed, then you start to see these increases'' in mutations.
Dubrova and his colleagues found that the rate of mutations declined with the passage of time once the bomb tests stopped. They said this suggests that the 1963 treaty banning aboveground nuclear weapons testing ``has been effective in reducing genetic risk to the affected population.''
Morgan said the findings are consistent with animal studies that showed low-level, chronic exposure to radiation, such as from the fallout of bomb tests, can cause some genetic mutations that are passed to the next generation.
Such mutations, he said, can be traced to radiation exposure affecting sperm at a critical phase of its development.
The mutations that pass to the next generation originate ``predominantly on the male side'' of reproduction, Morgan said.
In an earlier study, Dubrova found similar mutations among families exposed to fallout from the 1986 nuclear power plant accident at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The deaths of about 8,000 people in the Ukraine, Russia and Belarus have been blamed on the incident, but another 200,000 are thought to live in areas still contaminated.
Dubrova's Chernobyl study, published in Nature in 1996, found that children of men living in the contaminated area of Belarus had about twice as many mutations as a comparison group in Britain. Many researchers said that study was flawed.
But Morgan said the new study in Kazakstan supports Dubrova's earlier findings.
On the Net:
Science: http://www.sciencemag.org
------
Nuclear Tests, Fallout Boosted DNA Mutation Rates
Thu Feb 7, 2002 5:29 PM ET
By Keith Mulvihill
Reuters Health
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020207/hl_nm/fallout_1
NEW YORK - People who lived near a nuclear test site in the former Soviet Union during active above-ground and atmospheric testing have nearly twice as many inheritable DNA mutations as their countrymen and women who were not exposed to radiation, according to the results of a new study.
But once atomic testing was forced underground by a US-USSR treaty, the international team of researchers found, the mutation rate in later generations of test-site neighbors began to drop.
Dr. Yuri E. Dubrova of the University of Leicester, UK, and colleagues investigated the effects of nuclear testing at Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan, formerly part of the Soviet Union and now an independent nation.
Between 1949 and 1989, 470 nuclear tests were performed at the Semipalatinsk site, some of which resulted in relatively high contamination of surrounding territories with radioactive fallout, Dubrova explained in an interview with Reuters Health.
The study "provides us with the first solid experimental evidence of an elevated mutation rate in the germline of families exposed to ionizing radiation," Dubrova said. "Germline" refers to the genes contained in a man's sperm and a woman's eggs, which are passed on to their children.
From 1949 to 1963, nuclear tests at Semipalatinsk took place in the atmosphere or on the ground, while tests after 1963 were conducted underground. Up to 85% of the radiation exposure to nearby residents came from four surface tests, conducted in 1949, 1951, 1953 and 1956.
The investigators evaluated the germline mutation rate in 40 three-generation families living near the nuclear test site, who were compared with 28 three-generation families from another rural region of Kazakhstan who had not been exposed to radiation.
The researchers divided the radiation-exposed families into two groups: those born before 1949, who had likely received the heaviest doses of radiation, and those born in 1950 and later. Individuals in the second group who were born between 1950 and 1956 were also exposed to a significant amount of radiation, while those born later were not.
People born before 1949 near Semipalatinsk had 1.8 times as many germline mutations as their counterparts who had not been exposed to radiation, Dubrova and colleagues found. Those born in 1950 and afterwards had 1.5 times the number of mutations seen in the unexposed group, according to the report in the February 8th issue of the journal Science.
"This means that exposure to ionizing radiation has resulted in (an) elevated mutation rate in the germline of the affected families," Dubrova told Reuters Health.
"The most interesting finding is that in the less-contaminated group, a negative correlation between germline mutation rate and the parental year of birth was found," he said. "This decrease in mutation rate perfectly reflects the improvement of the radiological situation in the area around the site after the cessation of atmospheric and ground nuclear tests in 1963."
According to Dubrova, the findings show that the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which banned atmospheric and above-ground nuclear tests and was signed by the US and USSR in August 1963, has been effective in reducing the genetic risks for the exposed population.
As far as health consequences due to the exposure, "an elevated incidence of cancer has been reported for this area, but these data are still preliminary," Dubrova stated.
"The message is straightforward," Dubrova said. "The testing (of nuclear weapons) in the atmosphere and above the ground was not the best idea, and the Soviet and American governments were clever enough to ban this testing in 1963."
----
Russia Rips CIA Report on Technology
By Mara D. Bellaby
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; 9:58 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42367-2002Feb7?language=printer
MOSCOW -- Russia angrily denounced a CIA report that questions the Kremlin's willingness and ability to prevent the spread of dangerous technology, a sign of renewed tension following a sharp improvement in relations in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The Foreign Ministry, in a harshly worded statement, on Thursday demanded an official explanation from Washington. The unclassified CIA report on weapons of mass destruction has caused "not only extreme surprise but also serious concern" in Russia, it said.
"This is the first time in recent years that an official American document makes an attempt to question the devotion, willingness and ability of the Russian government to prevent the leakage of sensitive products and technology abroad," the Foreign Ministry said. "Russia strictly meets its international obligations to control the export of sensitive trade and technology."
CIA Director George Tenet told Congress on Wednesday that Russia is one of the leading suppliers of nuclear technology and missiles to countries hostile to the United States and remains "the first choice of nations seeking nuclear technology and training."
The CIA report to Congress, which covers the first half of 2001 but was released last week, said the Russian government's "commitment, willingness, and ability to curb proliferation-related transfers remain uncertain."
"Despite improvements in Russia's economy, the state-run defense, biotechnology, and nuclear industries remain strapped for funds, even as Moscow looks to them for badly needed foreign exchange through exports," it said. "We remain very concerned about the proliferation implications of such sales in several areas."
President Vladimir Putin has lent strong support for the U.S.-led campaign in Afghanistan, saying Russia long ago recognized the worldwide threat of terrorism. But President Bush's denunciation of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as part of an "axis of evil" that must stop pursuing weapons of mass destruction or face consequences presented a challenge to Russia, which has friendly ties with all three.
In Moscow, Iran's ambassador warned of unpredictable consequences if the United States uses force against Iran, saying "we will react as any country would," but Gholam Reza Shafei expressed hope that U.S. leaders "will come to their senses and will not allow this to happen." He did not elaborate on Iran's possible response.
Shafei dismissed as "baseless" allegations by top U.S. officials linking Iran to terrorist organizations and that it was in pursuit of nuclear technologies.
Russia is engaged in a $800 million deal to build a nuclear power plant in Iran, assistance the CIA report said "enhances Iran's ability to support a nuclear weapons development effort."
Russia is eager for the removal of U.N. sanctions against Iraq, which have stalled oil projects and the repayment of billion in Iraqi debt to Moscow.
Thursday's harsh words follow recent bickering over renewed U.S. criticism of Russian actions in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Russia says its war in Chechnya is a battle against international terrorism, and has accused the international community of applying double standards.
Despite disagreements, Putin has continued to pursue closer ties with the United States, and relations are warmer than in years. Both countries say they hope to reach agreement on cuts in long-range nuclear weapons stockpiles in time for a planned summit in Russia in May.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said the United States expects the cuts to be legally binding - as the Kremlin, with its cash-strapped military, has repeatedly stressed it would prefer over an informal deal Bush had said he wanted.
Russia and the United States "are building up cooperation in tackling those problems that the international community is facing in the 21st century," Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Thursday after a meeting with former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, according to Interfax news agency.
Ivanov told Interfax that differences remain between the former Cold War foes, particularly over the Bush administration's decision to pull out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Russians have called the move a mistake and a threat to global security.
----
Russia Praises U.S. Stand on Arms Pact, but Differences Remain
New York Times
February 7, 2002
By MICHAEL WINES
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/international/europe/07RUSS.html
MOSCOW, Feb. 6 - Senior Russian officials heaped praise on the Bush administration today for consenting to be legally bound by a future nuclear arms agreement, and one said a pact dictating sweeping cuts in the two nations' nuclear arsenals was now likely within months.
Yet both American and Russian experts cautioned that the sides remain sharply divided over important elements of any deal, from the form of the accord to whether scrapped nuclear warheads would be warehoused or dismantled.
President Bush and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia hope to reach agreement on significant cuts in their strategic nuclear forces by late May, when Mr. Bush is scheduled to visit Moscow.
The American decision to accept a binding arms agreement, after months of indicating the opposite, was a tactical victory for Mr. Putin, who had insisted that the Kremlin would never reduce its national defenses on a handshake.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that the White House understood Mr. Putin's concerns and that it was studying options for an accord, including a treaty or an executive agreement that Congress would approve.
Today, the first deputy chief of staff of the Russian armed forces, Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, said Secretary Powell's remarks paved the way for an agreement by the time of Mr. Bush's arrival in Moscow.
"We can prepare an agreement that would satisfy both sides and receive understanding of the world community," he was quoted as saying by the Interfax-Military news agency here.
Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, offering a more restrained assessment, called Secretary Powell's words "an important signal indicating that the two major nuclear powers will continue to seek understandings in the area of arms control."
Later, a senior Foreign Ministry official was even more sober, saying that significant differences remain. Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, in Washington, said tonight that he shared that view.
The contemplated cuts are sweeping: from more than 6,000 warheads each, Russia has proposed to reduce its strategic nuclear forces over several years to no fewer than 1,500 warheads, while the United States would cut its force to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads. Both sides would retain thousands of smaller tactical nuclear arms.
Mr. Kimball said discussions with Russian and American experts suggested that there was no agreement yet over issues as basic as whether the arms cuts would be irreversible.
Mr. Putin has insisted that any weapons removed from the nuclear forces be destroyed. The White House has said it wants to warehouse decommissioned nuclear warheads.
Nor does the United States agree with a basic Russian premise: that any cuts in strategic nuclear forces are tied directly to America's ballistic missile defense program.
"The Bush administration will at all costs avoid any limits on missile defenses," Mr. Kimball said. "The Russians' bottom line is that they want to establish a kind of firebreak between where we are today and some future deployment of weapons in space, which they view as an even greater threat."
The two sides have yet to agree on how each would verify the others' weapons reductions. Moreover, it is not yet certain that Moscow will accept as legally binding the form of a final arms control accord proposed by the United States.
-------- ukraine
Chernobyl Advocates Denounce U.N.
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-UN-Chernobyl.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39686-2002Feb7?language=printer
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukrainian activists on Thursday criticized a U.N. report that called for helping victims of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident by shifting away from giving them direct subsidies and putting money into economic development.
The study by four U.N. agencies said state aid subsidies for millions of people in affected areas are draining the strained budgets of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. It proposed ``an entirely new approach'' to helping those left in a state of ``chronic dependency'' -- by getting them jobs, fostering small businesses and reviving agriculture in the areas most affected by the world's worst nuclear disaster.
But advocates for victims in Ukraine and Belarusian officials criticized the U.N. proposal, saying more money must be spent to help sickened victims and to clean up contaminated land before agriculture can be revived.
``Those affected by Chernobyl ... are living below the poverty level,'' Yuriy Andreyev, the head of the activist group Chernobyl Union. He said Ukraine, where the plant is located, spent $350 million on the Chernobyl aftermath last year and has allocated $507 million this year, but contended that four times more money is needed.
He said the report ``did not correspond to reality.''
Andreyev said the government has already slashed many programs dealing with the consequences of Chernobyl and supporting human needs.
The U.N. report said such projects are draining national budgets and should be made more effective.
The study, released Wednesday, said that with the emergency phase of recovery over, the three governments and the international community must now work toward ``long overdue'' extended development of the communities hurt by the disaster.
``Within the available budgets, it is the only real alternative to the progressive breakdown of the recovery effort, the continuing hemorrhaging of scarce resources and continuing distress for the people at the center of the problem,'' the report said.
While the report said 4.5 million people were receiving financial help, Andreyev said the number of affected people is closer to 7.3 million. He said more than 2 million people in Ukraine alone live in areas that are still contaminated, instead of the more than 200,000 mentioned in the report.
The explosion and fire at Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor on April 26, 1986, contaminated 23 percent of Belarus, 5 percent of Ukraine and 1.5 percent of Russia, according to the report. It also spewed a radioactive cloud across Europe. At least 8,000 people have died, most from radiation-related diseases.
In Belarus, Slavomir Antonovich, spokesman for the state committee for Chernobyl issues, said his impoverished government had paid just 17 percent of what was promised to Chernobyl victims and for cleanup projects last year. ``Chernobyl has been forgotten amid other world cataclysms. We hope that the world community will in the end remember Chernobyl,'' he said.
Ukraine, Belarus and Russia suffered severe economic decline following the 1991 Soviet collapse and have often appealed for foreign aid for Chernobyl-related projects. After years of foreign pressure and promises of aid, Ukraine closed Chernobyl in December 2000.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Bush Expected to OK Waste Site
By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; 11:08 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A38699-2002Feb7?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- President Bush was giving top Nevada officials one final hearing on Thursday before taking action, possibly as soon as early next week, to approve construction of a nuclear waste site in Nevada.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham endorsed the site last month, but by law has to wait 30 days to give a formal recommendation to the president. That time is up this Saturday and Bush is expected to make a decision quickly, congressional and administration sources said.
Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, who is highly critical of Abraham's endorsement of the site, was invited to make one last-ditch argument to Bush in an Oval Office meeting Thursday. The state's two U.S. senators, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican John Ensign, were also participating in that closed-door meeting in hopes of persuading the president to hold off on any decision.
With Nevada officials vowing to try to prevent the shipment of up to 77,000 tons of nuclear waste into their state, a final decision will be up to Congress. Nevada can block a presidential decision, but Congress can then overrule the state.
Bush will not make a final decision until he gets the report from Abraham but is expected to approve the Yucca Mountain site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, said White House sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
"He trusts the energy secretary's judgment," said one source. Abraham has briefed Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge about the need for a centralized site for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste and Ridge "saw no reason to object," said the source.
Even after a presidential decision, it will be years before the site - once it gets a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission - would be ready to take any of the waste now kept in spent fuel pools and concrete bunkers at nuclear power plants around the country.
Abraham, who notified Nevada officials on Jan. 10 that he will recommend the site to the president, called it a "scientifically sound and suitable" place to bury the nation's used reactor fuel now kept at the power plants.
The Energy Department's schedule calls for opening the site to waste shipments by 2010, but that timetable could be optimistic, government and industry officials acknowledge.
Meanwhile, Nevada officials, fully expecting a go-ahead from Bush, are revving up for a tough fight in Congress, which will have 90 days to overrule the Nevada objection if it comes to that.
One reason Bush wants to make a decision quickly is that he wants to give Nevada as little time as possible to lobby other lawmakers on the issue, said both administration and congressional sources closely watching the issue.
According to congressional sources, at this point almost all of the Republicans - and a good number of Democrats - appear ready to support the president on building the Yucca Mountain repository.
Ensign and Rep. James Gibbons, also a Republican, are stepping up efforts to try to sway some GOP lawmakers to oppose the site.
"They need time," said one congressional source, who said that perhaps as many as 20 Republicans might have to be convinced to oppose their president if Nevada's objections are to be sustained.
Under a 1987 law that designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada to be the only location to be studied for waste disposal, Nevada has 60 days to override a presidential decision. Congress then has 90 legislative days to counter Nevada's objection by a majority vote in both the House and Senate.
If the president's decision is affirmed, the Energy Department can begin preparing an application for an NRC license to build and operate the underground facility. The licensing process is likely will take several years.
----
Nevadans Press Bush on Nuclear Waste Site
February 7, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-bush-yucca.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Warning that public health was at stake, Nevada's governor and key lawmakers appealed to President Bush on Thursday to abandon a plan to use a remote Nevada site as the final resting place for the nation's vast amounts of radioactive waste.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has already endorsed plans to build a repository under Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas, to store an estimated 70,000 tons of radioactive materials from nuclear power plants.
He is expected to submit his formal recommendations to Bush as early as Sunday, prompting a last-minute lobbying blitz by Nevada's Republican Gov. Kenny Guinn, Democratic Sen. Harry Reid and Republican Sen. John Ensign, who urged Bush to consider safety concerns such as the risk of long-term radiation leaks.
``The Department of Energy has literally been hellbent on building Yucca Mountain regardless of what the science is,'' Ensign said following the meeting with Bush.
``What our mission was today was to give him the other side, based on sound science, based on sound economics, that would say that Yucca Mountain should not go forward at this point. The safety considerations have not been addressed,'' he added.
During the meeting, which lasted about 25 minutes, Bush did not say what his decision would be, according to participants, though the president is widely expected to endorse the project.
Ensign said he believed Bush was genuinely undecided. ``I think the president has doubts in his mind.''
Reid and Guinn said Bush promised to consider the concerns they raised.
Used fuel from the nation's 103 nuclear power plants is piling up at a rate of about 2,000 tons a year, according to the U.S. utility industry, which has pressed the federal government to designate Yucca Mountain as a waste repository.
Although the Energy Department's endorsement is a key step in the process, the plan for a repository at Yucca Mountain still faces several obstacles before construction could begin.
If Nevada objects to the administration's plan, as Guinn made clear he would, Congress would have 90 days to decide the issue with a simple majority vote. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must also approve a license for the site.
Some $8 billion has been spent over the last 20 years to determine if Yucca Mountain will offer safe storage, with critics contending the studies have shown it is unsuitable. Reid contends that the government would have to spend a total of $100 billion to develop the storage site.
----
Nevada officials press Bush on Yucca Mt.
February 7, 2002
UPI
Reported by Kathy Gambrell in Washington and Hil Anderson in Los Angeles
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/07022002-074144-2883r.htm
WASHINGTON -- A delegation of high-ranking Nevada officials put a positive spin on their meeting Thursday with President Bush during which time they vigorously tried to dissuade him from going along with a recommendation to turn a remote desert location in their state into a radioactive waste storage site for the entire nation.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced a month ago that he would recommend the White House push ahead with the controversial development of Yucca Mountain into a repository for tons of nuclear materials from all over the country, and White House officials believe the president is likely to go along with the recommendation.
Nevertheless, Nevada's governor and congressional delegation have vowed to fight the plan and met with Bush for nearly a half an hour Thursday in an attempt to convince him to shelve the plan.
"He was genuinely interested in what we were saying in there about sound science and the safety of Yucca Mountain," Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., told reporters after the meeting. "He listened to all the issues and asked a lot of very good questions. I believe the president is going to make the decision he believes is best for the nation."
Nevada officials say there are still too many unanswered questions about the long-term effects of storing dangerous waste for decades. Yucca Mountain, located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is considered an attractive location due to its hard-rock formations and dry desert climate, however critics contend earthquakes and flash floods could pose a threat and deserve further study.
There are also worries about the possibility of an accident or terrorist attack against the trucks and trains hauling radioactive materials through the state.
"The Department of Energy has been literally hell-bent on building Yucca Mountain regardless of what the science is," Ensign said. "Our mission today was to give him (Bush) the other side, give him a side based on sound science and sound economics that say Yucca Mountain should not go forward at this point."
Gov. Kenny Guinn said Wednesday before flying to Washington that he was concerned that Yucca Mountain was being "fast-tracked" by the Bush administration though he said Thursday that Bush had appeared receptive to their concerns.
"He was gracious, a good listener and seemed interested in all we talked about," Guinn said. "We want to make certain the shipment or storage of nuclear waste in Nevada is predicated on sound science."
Abraham has said that Yucca Mountain has been extensively studied and that it was time to move ahead despite the fact that a number of scientific studies had not yet been completed. The energy industry has urged the government to pick a site as soon as possible so that spent power plant fuel currently stored in some 130 sites across the country can be transferred to a central location.
Under the statute aimed at establishing a national nuclear waste repository, Abraham must wait 30 days after informing Nevada of his decision before formally recommending Yucca Mountain to the White House. Saturday is the earliest day that Abraham can make the formal recommendation, and the president could send the matter to Congress as early as Monday.
Guinn is allowed to slap a veto on the project, however simple majorities in the House and Senate could override a veto. The Las Vegas Review-Journal has reported that the House was expected to override the veto, although the Senate's intentions were not as certain.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
[The only good thing about wartime is the occasional glimpse into how the hidden governments operate. Here's a good example. et]
U.S. paid off warlords
By Andrew Bushell
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 7, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020207-7364732.htm
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Dozens of Afghan warlords were given $200,000 payments and satellite phones to secure their cooperation in the war against the Taliban and its al Qaeda allies, according to bankers, money changers and others close to the transactions.
More than 35 local commanders made banking transactions involving identical $200,000 sums late last year, in at least some cases after meetings with U.S. officials.
The transactions totaled more than $7 million and helped prompt a spending spree on four-wheel-drive vehicles in Pakistan.
The gifts of satellite telephones to the tribal commanders, whose efforts proved crucial to driving Taliban forces from southern and eastern Afghanistan, has been well-publicized in the region, but the cash payments have not.
Asked about the payments, a senior Western diplomat based in Pakistan said, "It sounds like someone in the State Department finally learned how Afghanistan works. The commanders have become fairly adept at selling themselves, and they always need money for guns."
U.S. recognition of this fact is evident from the decision to offer a reward of $25 million for information leading to the arrest of Osama bin Laden.
However a State Department official in Washington denied knowledge of such a program, calling it "bizarre" and "not something the State Department would normally do." A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
Among those receiving the payments was Mirza Mohammed Nassery, who defected from the Taliban and served as a commander with the Pir Gillani group in the hotly contested city of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan.
According to his driver, Mr. Nassery last fall made the long trip from Kunduz to the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, where he spent an hour and emerged carrying a large black briefcase.
He then drove to Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan and immediately called his banker, who belongs to a "hawala" based in the city's Chowk Yadgar district. A "hawala" is an underground banking system, common in South Asia, that allows transfers of funds without paperwork.
The banker arrived shortly afterward at Mr. Nassery's house.
According to the banker, who discussed the case on the condition he not be identified, Mr. Nassery opened his briefcase and placed $200,000 and a large satellite telephone on the table.
Initially hesitant to explain where he got the money, the tribal commander told the banker that American officials had given him the cash in exchange for his cooperation in the drive to topple the Taliban and destroy al Qaeda.
According to his banker, Mr. Nassery laughed as he described the end of the meeting, when an American official asked him to sign a statement agreeing to terms for the receipt of the funds.
However, Mr. Nassery was not laughing when he emphasized the need for the money to be sent through the hawala to Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Mr. Nassery died several weeks later in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan along with two other high-ranking Afghan commanders who worked with the Pir Gillani, and the money is still waiting to be claimed in Kabul, the banker said.
Interviews with dozens of moneychangers and hawala operators in Chowk Yadgar, the largest market for currency transfers into Afghanistan, showed that no fewer than 35 tribal commanders, most of them Taliban defectors, either deposited or arranged the transfer of $200,000 sums.
A highly placed source in the Interior Ministry of Hamid Karzai's interim administration in Kabul also confirmed that many such payments took place in the weeks after the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.
A midranking U.S. Army officer involved in the siege of Tora Bora, who declined to be named, said, "While we never talked about it directly, everyone knew that the cooperation of the commanders, most of them former Taliban, had been bought."
The influx of cash explains in part a run on high-priced sport utility vehicles in Peshawar. One Toyota dealer said: "Now that the mujahideen have plenty of money they prefer Toyota pickups and SUVs because, in the words of one commander, 'Toyota is good for jihad.'"
Over the past 20 years of strife in Afghanistan, warlords have developed a keen sense of survival and a history of switching sides.
According to military analysts, cash payments are attractive because they allow a warlord to avoid defeat from an obviously more powerful force and at the same time build up reserves of weapons.
"If we had only given them satellite phones and no money they would have had no reason to speak with us and probably would have sold the sat-phones," the U.S. Army officer said.
----
U.S. Frees 27 Afghans Held in Raid
Families of 18 Killed Get CIA Cash Compensation
By Steve Vogel and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, February 7, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35123-2002Feb6?language=printer
U.S. forces yesterday released all 27 people captured in a deadly commando raid in southern Afghanistan last month, acknowledging that none of the prisoners was a member of al Qaeda or the Taliban as the Pentagon originally claimed.
A senior U.S. official, meanwhile, said that the CIA compensated families of the victims killed in the raid on the village of Hazar Qadam, making cash payments through local Afghan officials. "It was clear to them that there was a regrettable circumstance there," the official said, adding that CIA officers believed U.S. military forces had killed pro-American Afghan fighters.
"Agency officers work with some of these tribal leaders and felt that it was appropriate to try to give them some compensation for their losses," the official said. He said each family had received at least $1,000.
However, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said it had still not concluded that U.S. forces erred in the Jan. 24 attack, which left at least 18 people dead, despite the CIA compensation payments and an assertion by Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, that those killed were innocent people.
"The release of the detainees isn't an admission that we made a mistake," said Maj. Ralph Mills, a spokesman for the Tampa-based command, which is overseeing the war. U.S. Special Forces "were being shot at by people who weren't in uniform, and they detained them," he said.
An Associated Press report from the village yesterday quoted Afghan witnesses who said that U.S. Special Forces burst into a small religious school and killed 19 people, most of them where they slept. Two of the 19 -- both government-appointed officials -- were handcuffed and shot in the schoolyard, the Afghans said.
No one inside the schoolrooms fired back, according to witnesses. "There was no firing" back, survivor Abdul Ali told the AP. "There was no time."
Asked about earlier reports of the bodies of two victims being bound, Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters last week that some of the victims appeared to have been in the custody of Afghans and may have been placed in handcuffs by local officials. "That explains what we're talking about in terms of those bound and found dead," he said.
Mills said the investigation into whether those killed in the raid on Hazar Qadam were Taliban or al Qaeda members -- as the Pentagon first claimed -- was continuing.
Military officials also insisted yesterday that a controversial U.S. airstrike on a convoy near the city of Khost in December was legitimate, even though Karzai told The Washington Post in an interview Monday that the U.S. forces were tricked into killing "tribal elders" who supported his government.
Despite the military's acknowledgment that U.S. forces had seized innocent people in the commando raid and held them for two weeks, U.S. officials refused to release any new details yesterday. It continued a pattern established in numerous other operations during the five-month-old war in which U.S. forces were alleged to have missed their targets, often causing civilian casualties.
In many of the cases, military authorities have cited ongoing investigations as justification for not disclosing details of incidents weeks or even months after they occurred. In other cases, they have insisted that disputed attacks were legitimate and that they had no reason to investigate civilian deaths.
Among the unresolved cases:
• The attack on the convoy outside Khost on Dec. 20, which killed at least 12 people, has been dogged by allegations that the United States fell victim to a warlord who duped commanders into attacking rivals. Karzai said that U.S. commanders were "misled" into thinking the vehicles contained members of the Taliban.
Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, the chief spokesman for the Central Command, said yesterday that military commanders continue to believe that the attack was legitimate and that Taliban leaders were killed. "We've looked at that and looked at that, we double-checked our intelligence, and we still think it's an appropriate target," he said.
• U.S. officials have released virtually no information about an apparent ambush in early January in Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan that claimed the life of the first U.S. soldier killed by hostile fire in the conflict. An inquiry was launched soon after the Jan. 4 attack, but it has not been completed and may never be.
"We may never understand what happened there," Quigley said. U.S. officials have investigated various leads, including one that a 15-year-old boy was the culprit, another that the shooting resulted from tribal conflict, and another that the shooting was revenge by an Afghan who had lost a relative in the fighting, but none has been established as the truth, he said.
• Two cases of friendly fire remain under investigation and unexplained, including a Nov. 26 bombing that killed five Northern Alliance fighters and wounded five U.S. soldiers outside Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan, and a Dec. 5 airstrike that killed three U.S. Special Forces soldiers and wounded 19 other people north of Kandahar.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, said on Jan. 3 that the investigation into the Dec. 5 incident was complete, but he reversed himself several days later and said the investigation still had to work its way up the chain of command.
Neither investigation is ready to be released, Quigley said yesterday.
• The Pentagon and Central Command acknowledged several bombing errors in October, including airstrikes that killed four United Nations workers in Kabul, another that missed its target by a mile and killed several civilians in the city, and two other strikes that hit a Red Cross warehouse in the capital 10 days apart.
But military officials have not detailed what went wrong in any of those cases, and no disciplinary action is known to have been taken against any pilots or commanders. "There have been none so far that I know of," Quigley said.
Amanda Williamson, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Washington, said the Pentagon made a formal apology to the organization after bombing its warehouses. She said the Pentagon blamed the bombing on a "procedural error."
Joost Hiltermann, executive director of the arms division at Human Rights Watch, said the Pentagon has tried to minimize civilian casualties in Afghanistan. But Hiltermann said the military does not generally investigate reports of unintended civilian casualties "unless there's a big public furor."
And when the U.S. military does investigate, he said, it typically reviews satellite pictures of a target and does not visit sites to determine what actually happened on the ground. "They look at satellite photos and say, 'We dropped bomb X on target Y and as a result of that, the target was taken out.' But that doesn't tell them whether any civilians were harmed. They don't go on the ground and investigate," Hiltermann said.
The Pentagon did dispatch a team of U.S. Special Forces to Hazar Qadam this week to investigate what happened in last month's commando raid.
An official with one relief organization, who asked that his name and that of his group not be identified, said that members of his staff had gathered credible reports of at least 52 civilian casualties, including many attending a wedding party, in Qualai Niazi, a village in eastern Afghanistan bombed by the United States on Dec. 29.
While the Pentagon has officially stated that the village was a legitimate military target, the relief official said his organization is convinced, after going back and interviewing villagers a second time, that innocent civilians were killed. "The estimates that we have in this account were 52 killed, and of those I think 25 were children," the official said.
Quigley said it may be impossible to ascertain the full truth in many of the incidents. "We're looking for clarity in a war where we often don't have people on the ground, and I'm not sure we'll ever have total clarity," he said.
Researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Missile May Have Hit Al Qaeda
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Afghan-US-Military.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan said Thursday that American ground forces may be dispatched to investigate the site where suspected al-Qaida members are reported to have been killed in a missile attack by a CIA-operated drone aircraft.
In Afghanistan, a regional leader said the missile killed seven members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network, but in Washington several officials said they did not know the number or identities of victims.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, told reporters the missile hit its intended target, but he said bad weather in the Zawar Khili area made it difficult to verify who was killed.
Other officials said the missile was fired Monday by a Predator unmanned aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. Among the factors that led U.S. officials to believe the targets were al-Qaida members was their Arab-style dress, the officials said.
In eastern Afghanistan, Wazir Khan, a brother of regional warlord Bacha Khan, said seven people were killed in the attack, but that bin Laden ``is not among those people.''
Franks was asked about the attack in an encounter with reporters after he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on the status of the war in Afghanistan. Reporters also asked Franks whether he had considered the possibility of putting missiles on the Global Hawk, a high-altitude unmanned aircraft.
Franks said he had not considered that, but he offered praise for the usefulness of the smaller Predator.
``The work that's been done with Predator is really, really good work, and I think we've all seen that,'' he said. ``And I think the insights that we have gained from this operation may well inform a variety of unmanned systems.''
The general also said the United States continues to believe it struck a legitimate target in an attack on a convoy of vehicles outside the town of Khost on Dec. 20, which killed 12 people. Hamid Karzai, the interim Afghan leader, has said the attack may have been a mistake and that U.S. commanders were misled by a local warlord into thinking the vehicle contained members of the Taliban militia.
``I remain convinced that there were people in that convoy that were precisely the people we wanted to strike,'' Franks said.
In his Senate testimony, Franks said the U.S. military will play a role in creating an Afghan national army, but that does not mean American troops will become part of an international peacekeeping force there.
``We intend to help them form an Afghan national army. There is no question about that,'' Franks said.
Specifics on how U.S. forces will carry out that effort remain under discussion, Franks said.
Franks said he will not recommend to President Bush that U.S. military operations in Afghanistan be phased out ``as long as there is a credible threat from puddles or pockets of al-Qaida or residual hard-core Taliban'' forces.
A senior Pentagon official, meanwhile, provided the most detailed breakdown so far of the nationalities among the Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
A new group of 28 arrived at Guantanamo Bay on Thursday, raising the total prisoner population to 186. Excluding the newly arrived 28, the population included about 50 Saudis, about 30 Yemenis, about 25 Pakistanis, eight Algerians, three Britons and small numbers from Egypt, Australia, France, Russia, Belgium, Sweden and other countries, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. All or nearly all of those are believed to be al-Qaida fighters, as opposed to Taliban militia.
There also are 12 Afghan nationals among the prisoners, all of which are believed to be Taliban members. Among these is Mullah Fazel Mazloom, the Taliban army chief.
-------- africa
U.S., French navies lead Africa training
Briefly
February 7, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020207-627666.htm
LAMU, Kenya - Military exercises involving thousands of U.S. troops and hundreds of Kenyan soldiers began here yesterday, military sources said. About 3,000 U.S. soldiers aboard three warships and 250 Kenyan troops from naval units will take part in the exercises.
"The intensive ground and air maneuvers are meant to improve the ability of our country's armed forces to work together with that of the U.S.," said Col. John Githinji, head of the Kenyan contingent. Military officials said the ships will be anchored outside the Manda navy base while the exercises are taking place.
The U.S.-Kenya exercises come days before larger maneuvers that will involve 16 African states in nine days of French-led exercises off the coast of Tanzania.
-------- arms sales
Russian arms sales to India flourish
FROM RICHARD BEESTON IN MOSCOW
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 07 2002
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002063080,00.html
THE MILITARY stand-off between India and Pakistan has provided Russian arms dealers with the perfect opportunity to boost sales to Delhi. After spending billions of pounds on Russian warplanes, tanks and frigates, India is now in the final stages of buying an aircraft carrier.
A Russian team headed by Ilya Klebanov, the Deputy Prime Minister responsible for arms exports, is on a four-day visit to India, the latest in a series of high-level visits.
Under orders from President Putin, Russian arms manufacturers are being encouraged to export weapons. Military experts believe that Russia made record sales last year, worth several billion pounds, mainly to China, India and Iran.
"Russian equipment is cheap and good," said Christopher Langton, editor of Military Balance and a former British military attaché in Moscow. "They are being encouraged to sell aggressively. I would not be surprised to see them overtake European producers, particularly in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where Western arms are too expensive for many countries."
-------- china
China buys U.S. satellite data to target Taiwan
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 7, 2002
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20020207-782596.htm
China's military is covertly buying U.S. commercial satellite photographs of Taiwan that U.S. intelligence officials say will be used to target the island with the mainland's growing arsenal of cruise and ballistic missiles.
Satellite photographs of most of the island are being purchased by China through a South Korean company, U.S. intelligence officials say.
The purchase of high-resolution satellite photographs is a new development indicating that China's military is increasing the accuracy of its ballistic missiles targeted at Taiwan and is developing a new land-attack cruise missile, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Disclosure of the missile-targeting reports comes amid recent signs of a thaw in relations between China and Taiwan, which China considers a renegade province.
President Bush is set to visit China beginning Feb. 21 for talks expected to include discussions of U.S. arms sales and military support for Taiwan, which Beijing opposes.
In May, China test-fired a new cruise missile that was part of a program to deploy a land-attack cruise missile, Beijing's answer to the U.S. Tomahawk. A second test was conducted in August.
The land-attack cruise missile is guided by an on board computer programed to fly close to the ground and requires detailed terrain mapping data to reach its target. U.S. intelligence officials believe the satellite photographs are for such terrain mapping.
Larry Wortzel, a specialist on the Chinese military at the Heritage Foundation, said Beijing's purchase of satellite imagery of Taiwan is worrisome.
"Despite the talk by China's communist leaders about seeking a peaceful resolution in the Taiwan Strait, the People's Liberation Army is methodically preparing for the use of ballsitic missiles and terrain and contour-modeling [tercom] cruise missiles to attack the democratic nation on Taiwan in order to bring it under communist rule," Mr. Wortzel said.
"As President Bush prepares for his trip to China, he should be told that when PRC leaders make oral commitments to do one thing, but act secretly to do another, it is impossible to accept their promises to stop proliferation or their calls for 'world peace and stability.'"
Xie Feng, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy, said he was unaware of the satellite photograph purchases. On the question of Taiwan, Mr. Xie said China seeks "peaceful reunification" but has both "the determination and ability" to stop Taiwan's "independence."
The new Chinese cruise missile is estimated to have the capability of carrying a warhead weighing 1,100 pounds with a range that is not known, U.S. officials said. Most long-range cruise missiles can fly at least 500 miles, with U.S. cruise missiles having ranges up to several thousand miles.
China also is increasing the accuracy of its short-range ballistic missiles deployed opposite Taiwan. Some 350 CSS-6 and CSS-7 missiles have been fielded within range of Taiwan in the past several years, increasing tensions.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org and a specialist on satellite imagery, said China has no satellite that can produce high-resolution photographs.
Mr. Pike said U.S. companies are not legally prohibited from selling commercial photographs to China and that images are not covered by export controls.
"This sort of imagery is fundamental for attack planning," Mr. Pike said. "It's the basis for any sort of targeting work for missile targeting, for any airborne assault planning they might be doing. You really could not think about doing serious military planning without this sort of imagery."
U.S. officials did not identify the South Korean company that was buying the photographs on behalf of China. However, the purchase is being carried out through Space Imaging's South Korean affiliate in Seoul.
CIA and White House National Security Council spokesmen declined to comment.
Mark Brender, a Space Imaging spokesman, said, "Like many American companies, we would like to grow the Asian market."
"We have regional affilliates in Seoul and Tokyo," he said. "Those affiliates are expanding their business in China, and we require them to comply with all U.S. laws and regulations."
Space Imaging operates the Ikonos satellite that is capable of taking pictures any place on Earth and producing images sharp enough to see objects larger than about 3 feet.
Defense officials said China's military buildup opposite Taiwan is continuing. Last year, the largest war games in years were held opposite the island.
Adm. Dennis Blair, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said in a speech last month that China and North Korea are two places in the region where "the threat of aggression plays a significant role."
"China retains the threat of force if Taiwan does not meet certain conditions," Adm. Blair said. "It is deploying missiles and modernizing its armed forces with the stated purpose of intimidating Taiwan."
The statements drew a harsh rebuke from the official newspaper of the Chinese military. "The arguments about 'threats from China' can never intimidate China," the newspaper PLA Daily stated Jan. 21.
China will pursue reuniting Taiwan on Beijing's terms "and will never rule out the possibility of using force if necessary," it said.
Three days later, Chinese Vice Prime Minister Qian Qichen gave a speech on Taiwan that was viewed by observers as one of the more conciliatory statements by the communist government in years.
Mr. Qian said that "although the two sides are not unified, both sides should actively create conditions and strive to reduce contradictions, improve relations between the two sides and break through the political stalemate."
He did not repeat Beijing's oft-stated position that China will use military force to reunite Taiwan if efforts at peaceful reunification fail.
----
Beijing's alternate realities
Arnold Beichman
February 7, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020207-70590662.htm
Sometime this month, President Bush will travel to communist China. The exact date of his departure is classified for obvious security reasons. His departure will be cloaked in secrecy, a quasi-triumph for Osama bin Laden and allies. If, however, a real understanding between the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) can be achieved, the time may come when an American president's travels can once more be openly reported.
But such understanding necessitates a significant change in outlook about the United States by President Jiang Zemin, 75, who will step down this year, and by his nominated successor, Hu Jintao, 60, PRC vice president. Mr. Jiang's nine-year incumbency was marked by weird and ridiculous misperceptions and conspiracy theories by the Chinese government of the democratic West, particularly of the United States.
There is no better authority for that statement than Chen You-Wei, the former political counselor of the PRC Embassy in Washington from 1988 to 1992 and before that a longtime commentator on foreign affairs for the People's Daily, the official Beijing newspaper. He is presently research associate at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.
Mr. Chen's findings are embodied in his book, "The Inside Stories of China-U.S. Diplomacy after Tiananmen." While it is written in Chinese, the book's first chapter has been translated and published as an article in the February issue of the Journal of Contemporary China. Mr. Chen lists 10 examples of "errors of analysis regarding Sino-U.S. relations and the world situation committed by Beijing at this most precarious time." The examples seem to indicate that the Chinese leadership lives in some kind of fantasy land.
1. The key to understanding the PRC's international behavior in the last two decades are the bloody events of Tiananmen Square on June 3-4, 1989, when the army, under the orders of Deng Xiaoping turned a peaceful protest movement into a massacre. (It was at the Tiananmen Gate 40 years earlier, on Oct. 1, 1949, that Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the People's Republic of China.) Mr. Chen writes:
"China's leaders believed that foreign forces, more than domestic ones, were behind Tiananmen, particularly the Western strategy of implementing a 'peaceful evolution' in China. The U.S. policy towards China was to topple the Chinese government and socialist system."
2. China's leaders believed that the first Bush administration and Congress were "essentially performing a 'good cop, bad cop' routine," hoping to draw the Soviet Union into a containment alliance against China.
3. Since it was the United States which was responsible for worsening Sino-U.S. relations, it was up to Washington to take the first step to repair those relations. China could afford to wait for the United States to move.
4. China was "reluctant" to abandon the strategy of playing the United States and Soviet Union against each other even though they knew that such a policy in the Gorbachev era was unreal.
5. On the eve of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Mr. Jiang still hoped to play the Soviet card against the United States. He traveled to Moscow in May 1990 to "embellish the 'eternal friendship' between the two communist countries. "He completely misread the situation," writes Mr. Chen, "and the collapse of the Soviet Union not long afterwards made Jiang's words look foolish."
6. China placed great hopes in the Moscow August, 1991 coup, which seemed to promise a restoration of the party dictatorship. A plane was readied to fly one of the party's major leaders, Liu Huaqing, to Moscow to lend support to the coup plotters but the rebellion fizzled and, writes Mr. Chen, "Beijing's hopes came to nothing."
7. With the fall of the Soviet Union, China wanted to "take part" in the German reunification negotiations and, writes Mr. Chen, "use Germany's sudden rise to contain the United States. But Germany refused to hold such talks, much to the disappointment of Beijing."
8. The Chinese leadership believed that entry of the United States into the Gulf War would benefit China because the war would drag on for months or years and eventually "take a turn for the worse." America's real motive in invading Iraq, the Chinese leadership believed, was to control Middle East oil and thereby exercise control over Germany and Japan.
9. America's Gulf War victory proved to the Chinese leaders that the United States was seeking global hegemony and that, therefore, China would become America's principal adversary.
10. Since China's leaders believed that "safeguarding socialism" was far more important than introducing reforms, the primary task for China was "to combat the 'peaceful evolution' plot of the West and make the United States its number one enemy."
"From 1989 to 1991," writes Mr. Chen, "China's most characteristic assessment of the world situation was that regardless of what had transpired in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, it would refuse to recognize the bankruptcy of communism, the defeat of socialism and the end of communist autocracy."
The author of the article lived in the belly of the beast for more than a half century. If the misperceptions he has described still dominate the thinking of the communist leaders, then Mr. Bush has a formidable task ahead of him, more suited perhaps to a psychiatrist than to a head of state.
Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for The Washington Times.
-------- colombia
U.S. Plan Aims to Stem Pipeline's Flow of Trouble
Colombia: White House proposes $98-million aid package to help Bogota combat rebel attacks on Cano Limon artery.
By RUTH MORRIS,
LOS ANGELES TIMES
February 6, 2002
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-000009372feb06.story
ARAUCA, Colombia -- It may have been the damp in the earth seeping into the bomb, or a faulty connection. Alex Ramirez is convinced it was the five amulets he wears around his neck. But for some reason, when he stepped on a rebel land mine three months ago, he survived the blast.
"The lights went out. I couldn't see or hear anything," the 25-year-old bomb expert recalled. "It felt as if I had something on my face. I thought it was blood, but it was oil."
As a member of a six-person anti-explosives army unit that patrols Occidental Petroleum Corp.'s Cano Limon pipeline here, Ramirez has signed up for one of the most dangerous jobs in Colombia: protecting oil shipments to the United States. For nearly two decades, Cano Limon has been a target of leftist guerrillas, who have blown so many holes in the Atlantic-bound pipeline that locals call it "the flute." With the pipeline's output reduced to a trickle by 13 blasts this year alone, the Bush administration stepped into the fray this week, unveiling a $98-million budget request to help the Colombian army thwart the attacks.
The plan would probably involve surveillance equipment and helicopter support, senior Bush administration officials said, and could take U.S. military assistance to a new level in Colombia's bloody 38-year civil war.
Until now, the U.S. has limited military assistance to Colombia's war on drugs, steering clear of direct involvement in what many consider a dead-end power struggle among Marxist rebels--most notably the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC--ultra-right paramilitary groups and the government.
"We're not saying this is counter-narcotics funding. It's not. It's different," said an administration official who visited Bogota, the Colombian capital, as part of a U.S. delegation Tuesday. "The proposition that we are making to the government of Colombia, and to our Congress, is that we ought to take an additional step."
Other U.S. officials said the budget request is merely part of the United States' broader effort to foster democracy and the rule of law in Colombia.
In Washington, State Department official Curt Struble said the rebel attacks, by closing down the pipeline for 243 days last year, had "a very significant impact on Colombian exports" and on the government's ability to generate money needed for economic growth.
In a briefing with reporters, he said the United States can legitimately help the Colombian military for "specific missions and objectives," as it already does in trying to fight narcotics traffic and kidnapping.
Colombian military officers in the field said their troops would welcome U.S. aid, but they noted that the Cano Limon pipeline, which serves Los Angeles-based Occidental, traverses 480 miles of wild frontier and is virtually indefensible without improved surveillance techniques. The pipeline is Colombia's second-largest and has a capacity to pump 240,000 barrels a day--when it's functioning.
Along the Venezuelan border where the pipeline begins, for instance, cattle rustlers and drug traffickers operate alongside three rebel fronts and the fiercely independent Uwa tribe. The region is such a tinderbox of illicit activity that local police can barely venture from their station houses without risking an ambush.
For the army troops patrolling the Cano Limon, the odds aren't much better.
"I know right now the enemy is close," Capt. Harold Rodriguez said as his counterinsurgency troops fanned into the sun-scorched pastures surrounding the site of a recent pipeline blast. "They either launch gas cylinders at us, or mine the area, or ambush us. Sometimes they blow up the tube just to lure us in."
Working nearby, Ramirez's anti-explosives crew crouched close to the ground, gingerly lifting clods of dirt on knife edges. The trip wires the team looks for are so thin, he said, there isn't enough light to see them after 4 p.m.
The pipeline's unique and hazardous work conditions also make for extremely fast repairs. Once an area is secured, engineers, cooks and laborers are whisked in by helicopter and usually have the pipeline working again within 13 hours.
"I'm not trained for this," chief engineer Alvaro Betancur said, referring to rebel ambushes that sometimes await his repair crews. Since his team came under fire during a job late last year, he added, "I think about my family. It makes me feel like throwing in the towel sometimes."
The rebels' bombing campaign, which has escalated during a critical phase in peace talks with the government, has raised huge environmental and financial concerns too. Government figures show that 2.5 million barrels of spilled Cano Limon crude have oozed into Colombia's rivers and ranges during the last 15 years--about 10 times the volume of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
Cattle drinking from the poisoned streams lose weight, locals say, while spills have clogged and blackened pristine swimming holes.
What's more, the cash-strapped Colombian government has an 85% stake in Cano Limon's output, and lost production is costing it hundreds of millions of dollars. The idling of the pipeline for two-thirds of 2001 led to a budget shortfall of nearly $500 million.
"The breeze brings this smell of oil, and it gives me a headache," said Otilia Espitia, the owner of a small farm near the pipeline. Espitia said she didn't mind the swarm of soldiers who were camped out among canary cages and laundry lines in her front yard, but she worried that her well water would be contaminated as the ground absorbed a gooey black slick forming just 50 feet away. She also pointed to several cracks along the walls of her home as testimony to earlier bomb blasts.
"I'd like to leave this area, but no one will buy this land," she said.
Downstream from Espitia's home, in the fishing hamlet of Puerto Lleras, every canoe was ringed by a strip of crude.
"We haven't been able to fish for two weeks, because the nets get ruined with the oil," catfish vendor Ciro Antonio Agudelo said as he scrubbed down his boat. Asked if he was angry with the rebels for causing the pollution, he glanced sideways before replying, "What does it achieve to get angry?"
"The FARC are looking for peace--in quotation marks--but they're making war," Lt. Col. Emilio Enrique Torres said of the tired peace process between the rebels and government negotiators, now in its third year. As the head of the 49th Battalion, which has lost 63 men trying to safeguard the pipeline, Torres is accompanied by a soldier carrying an automatic rifle every morning as he jogs around his barracks.
Torres said the FARC is displaying its military might ahead of an April 7 deadline to set terms for a cease-fire agreement. Besides hitting the pipeline, FARC fighters have toppled electricity pylons, knocked out bridges and parked bicycle bombs on busy city streets in an effort to tie the country's infrastructure in knots.
"They want to weaken the state and impose their own conditions at the [peace] table," Torres said. However, he stopped short of ruling out a secondary, financial motive.
The rebels have long sought a dialogue with Occidental managers, presumably to arrange for the company to pay them "vaccines," or extortion payments. Occidental insists that it will never acquiesce to such demands.
Farther downriver, Arauca, the capital of Arauca state, is also reeling from the pipeline sabotage. Local officials rely heavily on oil royalties to meet budget demands, so every new round of bombings translates into salary freezes for teachers and layoffs for construction workers.
"Arauca is dead. The oil has been lost," grocer Fredy Rodrigo Tovar said as he served cold sodas to customers. "First there was unemployment, and now people are robbing to eat."
Like others, Tovar complained that revenue from the region's "black gold" had mostly lined the pockets of corrupt politicians. The city abounds with white-elephant building projects, such as a flooded velodrome for bicycle races, known locally as "the monument to cement."
Yet the local hospital has no money to maintain its ambulances. All three are out of service.
"We were unprepared," former Gov. Hector Federico Gallardo said. "If you're poor and uneducated and you win the biggest lottery in history, you won't administer the money well."
Speaking privately, locals say that the rebels have been plundering regional government coffers too, pressing officials to use contractors with guerrilla links and methodically "taxing" government-sponsored projects.
With or without U.S. military aid to protect the Cano Limon pipeline, they say, it is unclear how the Colombian government can cut off Arauca's entrenched rebel factions from millions of dollars in oil revenue. Until the government takes on the task, Arauca's residents are likely to remain as impoverished as ever.
Back at the Cano Limon field, an officer who requested anonymity waved toward a wall of oil barrels painted in camouflage, forming a barricade around a small statue of the Virgin Mary.
"I have her well protected," he said. "But as long as a young guy is hungry, [he'll join the rebels] and come after you. If there were more schools, more roads, more jobs, we wouldn't have to be here."
Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- iran
Khamenei: Iran Would Make U.S. Regret Any Attack
February 7, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-attack-iran-usa.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned the United States on Thursday Iran would make it regret any attack on the Islamic Republic.
A war of words has raged between arch-enemies Tehran and Washington since President Bush last week accused Iran, together with Iraq and North Korea, of being an ``axis of evil'' and developing weapons of mass destruction.
``The Iranian nation will not initiate an attack because we believe that seeking hegemony is as bad as accepting it,'' Khamenei, whose powers include that of commander-in-chief of Iran's armed forces, told an assembly of air force officers.
``But whoever threatens the interests of the Iranian nation or attacks this nation, the answer of the Iranian nation will be harsh and make them regret,'' he said in comments broadcast on state television.
U.S. officials have also accused Iran of giving refuge to fleeing al Qaeda fighters and plotting to destabilize the new government in neighboring Afghanistan -- charges Iran vehemently denies.
But the latest spat with the United States has strengthened the hand of conservatives against President Mohammad Khatami's reformers, who had tried to improve ties with Washington cut after revolutionaries seized U.S. diplomats in Tehran in 1980.
A HISTORY OF BAD BLOOD
While keeping up the harsh rhetoric, the Islamic Republic is also wooing European countries to drive a wedge between them and the world's last remaining superpower.
``American leaders are complaining 'why does the Iranian nation hate us?','' said Khamenei. ``It is not just the Iranian nation, but all nations all around the world which hate you, you are hated in Latin America, all over Asia and even in Europe.''
``Death to America, death to Israel,'' chanted the officers, squatting and kneeling before the black-turbaned Khamenei at his headquarters in Tehran.
Enmity toward the United States and Israel is a cornerstone of belief for the Islamic Republic, which emerged after the 1979 revolution toppled the U.S.-backed shah.
Israel has accused Iran of supplying thousands of missiles to Hizbollah guerrillas in south Lebanon and is concerned about Iran's nuclear program and ballistic missile development.
But Israel hastily denied it had any plans to attack Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor under construction in the south of the country. Iran says the power plant is strictly civilian.
With Iran already subject to harsh U.S. sanctions hurting its all-important oil industry, analysts say there are few ways Washington can put more pressure on Tehran.
Invasion in 1980 by Iraq -- then a U.S. ally -- and subsequent eight-year war helped consolidate the fledgling Islamic system under the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
``From the point of view of the United States, countries that totally obey them and follow their expansionist policies are good countries and acceptable,'' said Khamenei who succeeded Khomeini on his death in 1989.
``Because the Iranian nation resisted and did not surrender to the big powers, now they are the enemy of the Iranian nation.''
-------- iraq
U.S. eyes unilateral action on Saddam
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 7, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020207-74465488.htm
The United States acknowledged yesterday that it was actively considering unilaterally ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told the House International Relations Committee that President Bush was examining action against Saddam as one option to achieve a "regime change" in Baghdad, which has been official U.S. policy for nearly five years.
"Regime change is something the United States might have to do alone," the secretary said. "How to do it? I would not like to go into any of the details of the options that are being looked at, but it is the most serious assessment of options that one might imagine. And [Mr. Bush] is leaving no stone unturned as to what we might do."
Reinforcing the intensified Bush administration focus on Iraq, a top aide to Richard B. Cheney said yesterday that the vice president would travel to the Middle East in mid-March, stopping in Israel and four states bordering Iraq to discuss future steps in the war on global terrorism.
Mr. Cheney will visit 11 nations, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait, all of which neighbor Iraq.
"The vice president will hold wide-ranging discussions on matters of mutual interests, including our ongoing campaign against terrorism and other regional security issues," Cheney aide Mary Matalin told Reuters news agency.
She said Mr. Cheney also would visit Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and Britain.
Mr. Powell's comments yesterday marked the first time he has spoken publicly about U.S. action in Iraq, after disagreements with such hawks in the administration as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz.
CIA Director George J. Tenet echoed Mr. Powell's remarks during a hearing yesterday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
"Today, [Saddam] maintains his vise grip on the levers of power through a pervasive intelligence and security apparatus, and even his reduced military force, which is less than half its prewar size, remains capable of defeating more poorly armed internal opposition groups and threatening Iraq's neighbors," Mr. Tenet said.
The president, who included Iraq in an "axis of evil," along with Iran and North Korea, in his State of the Union address to Congress last week, has demanded that Baghdad allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country.
After an overture from Saddam to the United Nations for talks earlier this week, Mr. Powell said that any discussions should be short and that the inspectors must have an "unfettered right" to conduct long-term searches of suspected weapons sites in Iraq.
The U.N. Security Council formed a special commission for disarming Iraq after the 1991 Gulf war, but no U.N. verification of Baghdad's compliance with resolutions banning production of weapons of mass destruction had taken place since Saddam expelled the inspectors in late 1998.
Yesterday, Mr. Powell said that "there is no doubt that the Iraqis are pursuing" a nuclear program, though the threat from it is not imminent.
"The best intelligence we have suggests that it isn't something they have ready to pop out within the next year or so," he said. "It would take them a bit longer, quite a bit longer than that in the absence of external help. But nevertheless, we are convinced that they are continuing to pursue such programs."
President George Bush, the current president's father, decided not to go to Baghdad after Saddam's defeat in the Gulf war, saying he lacked a U.N. mandate to oust the Iraqi dictator. He said, however, that he hoped the people of Iraq would overthrow their leader.
U.S. policy-makers also were concerned that the removal of Saddam might create a vacuum, destabilizing the entire region.
It wasn't until a speech by Madeleine K. Albright, secretary of state under President Clinton, in March 1997 that Saddam's departure became an official U.S. policy objective. Even then, Washington was reluctant to act forcefully.
Mr. Powell said yesterday that Mr. Bush is "determined to keep this on the front burner and is looking at all the options that are available for him to deal with this in a decisive way."
The secretary dismissed European concerns about American unilateralism but said that, when the international community "does not agree with us, we do not shrink from doing what we think is right."
"This suggestion that you sometimes see in intellectual circles that the United States is acting unilaterally and not consulting with our European partners - this just simply couldn't be further from the truth.
"We recognize that there are strong points of view in Europe, and we always appreciate hearing these strong points of view, and I hear them whether I appreciate them or not. That is part of diplomacy. That is how friends work with each other."
French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine yesterday criticized the Bush administration for its "simplistic" foreign policy. "Today we are threatened by a simplism that reduces all the problems of the world to the struggle against terrorism and is not properly thought through," he told France Inter radio.
After his testimony, Mr. Powell flew to the Bahamas for an annual meeting with Caribbean foreign ministers on trade, migration and law enforcement. The Bush administration, which calls the Caribbean the "third border" of the United States, after Canada and Mexico, is trying to stem the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants from and through the islands.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
----
Iraqi Military Still Has Some Punch
By John J. Lumpkin
Associated Press Writer
Friday, February 8, 2002; 2:48 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43373-2002Feb8?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- The Iraqi military isn't what it used to be, but it still has some punch.
Enough punch that an Afghanistan-style proxy war, using insurgent groups backed by U.S. airstrikes and small numbers of special forces, probably wouldn't topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials said.
Unlike the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, Iraq has a large standing army, modern air defenses and short-range surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. U.S. intelligence agencies also believe Iraq has stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons.
Iraq's military capabilities became a more pressing question this week with comments by Secretary of State Colin Powell that President Bush is considering a "regime change" and "the most serious set of options one might imagine" for dealing with Saddam.
With between 350,000 and 400,000 troops, Iraq's military is only about 40 percent as large as it was before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi occupiers out of Kuwait and routed much of Saddam's army, then the fourth largest in the world.
Iraq's military is now geared toward fighting insurgents and keeping Saddam in power, U.S. officials said. Before the Gulf War, its prime function was to make Iraq a regional power.
It "remains capable of defeating more poorly armed internal opposition groups and threatening Iraq's neighbors," CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee this week.
Rebel forces aren't strong enough to take on the Iraqi army without U.S. ground forces, experts say. The Iraqi National Congress, a London-based opposition group that seeks international support to overthrow Saddam, is regarded as unreliable by many in Washington.
The Bush administration has been engaged in an internal debate over whether and how to strike Iraq, with the aim of deposing Saddam and ending the country's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Inside Iraq, many of Saddam's regular army units are arrayed in the north and southeastern parts of the country to keep down opposition.
Kurds, protected by an umbrella of U.S. and British jets enforcing a no-fly zone, have set up safe enclaves in northern Iraq. The Iraqi military has largely defeated the southern Shiite Muslim insurgency despite a second no-fly zone in that region. U.S. warplanes patrolling the flight interdiction zones regularly bomb Iraqi air defenses that target them.
Many of Iraq's best troops in the Republican Guard remain closer to Baghdad as Saddam's private guards.
Iraq's equipment is largely of pre-1990, Warsaw Pact vintage. Iraq has about 2,000 tanks, including a few hundred relatively modern T-72s, and a few hundred jet fighters and interceptors, defense officials said.
It's unclear how effectively maintained they are. U.N. sanctions, in force since Saddam sent troops into Kuwait in August 1990, have made spare parts hard to get.
"They have had no significant military modernization for a decade, where we have made massive strides in every area of capability," said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The Iraqi military is vastly improved, however, in its ability to hide and disperse its equipment, especially items related to its program for developing weapons of mass destruction, defense officials said. Some of the facilities are believed ensconced in bunkers, beneath hospitals or in Saddam's palaces.
Iraq's weapons program is a wild card in any U.S. effort to overthrow him. If threatened personally, he may use biological or chemical weapons, either on Israel or U.S. forces.
Iraq is allowed ballistic missiles that can hit targets no more than 90 miles away, but defense officials say those missiles could easily be upgraded to hit more distant targets, such as Israel. It probably also has a few hidden Scud missiles, which can reach Israel, left from the Gulf War.
The CIA is authorized to try to destabilize Saddam's government. Most of Saddam's advisers and military commanders are loyal, however, partly because he has executed most of the others. Thus, fomenting a palace coup is regarded as unlikely.
Iraq is believed to export relatively little terrorism, especially compared with its neighbor, Iran, which backs Hezbollah in Lebanon, among others. U.S. intelligence has found nothing directly linking Iraq to the Sept. 11 attacks.
The best-known terrorist organization thought to be in Iraq is that headed by Abu Nidal, who split from Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s, claiming Arafat was too willing to compromise with Israel. Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabri al-Banna, hasn't targeted Western interests since the late 1980s.
The United States might base any anti-Saddam offensive on Iraq's refusal to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into the country, but the large U.S. military presence in the Middle East is incapable of launching a ground war without reinforcements.
Support from U.S. allies, especially Turkey and Saudi Arabia, would be critical in any new war against Iraq, Cordesman said. Saudi Arabia may be tiring of the U.S. presence on its soil, and Turkey almost certainly would not help the United States support Kurdish rebels seeking independence in northern Iraq. Turkey has a large and restive Kurdish population in its eastern areas, and it opposes Kurdish stirrings anywhere in the region.
----
Taking on the evil axis
Jed Babbin
February 7, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020207-94384513.htm
The Bush Doctrine, though still a work in progress, will certainly be recorded as one that changed America's course in history. Just as the Monroe Doctrine set out boundaries for the presence of European powers in the Americas, the Bush Doctrine sets out the boundaries that terrorists and the nations that support them cannot cross. The difficulty for President Bush, and for us, is that at the moment we probably do not have the capability to carry it out.
From the last dustup with the Brits in 1812 to the attacks of September 11, America has generally forsworn striking at any nation that had not attacked us first. But war, and the means by which it is fought, have changed so drastically that the Bush Doctrine now makes equally dramatic changes to our basic strategy. Accusing someone of planning a "pre-emptive strike" was a Cold War obscene insult, because it was the label for unprovoked use of nuclear weapons. Now, pre-emptive action - not pre-emptive nuclear attack - is an essential means to deal with threats that are not deterred by our strengths, even the possibility of nuclear counterattack. Until the war on the Taliban began last October, terrorists - including terrorist nations - had reason to doubt we would act decisively even after an attack. Now Mr. Bush has wisely changed the equation.
Iraq, Iran and North Korea - Mr. Bush's "axis of evil" - know we have them in our sights. Each is a formidable adversary. If anything is clear - to them as well as us - we lack the forces to deal with them all at once. It will have to be one at a time. Now that the Afghanistan campaign is almost over, it is reasonable to ask, what's next? There is no clear answer. The decision will have to be based on two factors: How urgent is their threat to us, and what are we capable of doing about it?
As much as Iran and Iraq may be alike, North Korea is part of a very different equation. It is not a home for Islamicist terror, but it is supplying terrorist nations with ballistic missiles and other weapons that make them so much greater a threat. Russia, China and Japan all will influence any war with North Korea, which both raises the stakes and complicates the problem. There may be other ways to stanch the flow of North Korean weapons. Hugely dangerous now, it may - like the Soviet Union - die of its own inadequacies. We can try to wait them out.
Iran and Iraq seem to be competing with each other to be next target. Iran is aiding and sheltering fugitive al Qaeda and Taliban troops and leaders. They train, arm and finance terrorists, including Hamas and others. If the Taliban and al Qaeda are able to resume operations because of Iran's help, we may have to pay the butcher's bill for Afghanistan a second time. Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction programs have gone forward since 1998 without U.N. inspection. Iraq certainly has biological weapons such as anthrax and probably smallpox and chemical weapons, probably including VX gas, one of the world's most deadly substances. Saddam Hussein's ballistic missiles - supplied by North Korea - can deliver these weapons against our troops in the region, or against Israel. Talk of reviving inspections in Iraq are only that. Trying to reimpose inspections will not do anything other than allow Iraq more time to further develop and deploy these weapons.
The only sensible goal is to overthrow Saddam's regime. To do this, we would have to mount an operation roughly equivalent to Desert Storm. In 1991, using airbases and ports in Saudi Arabia, we deployed about 500,000 troops, most of our air forces and forces from a dozen allies. We don't have the ability to do that now. Thanks to Bill Clinton's defense "build-down," we have too few ships and aircraft, too little sealift and airlift to mount such an operation. None of our allies are yet marching alongside, and the Saudis won't allow us to use the bases there. Without our allies, and without Saudi bases, we need to create other options to successfully take on Saddam.
Complicating the Iraq problem are Turkey and Israel. Turkey has a legitimate interest in the Kurdish tribes in northern Iraq because their unrest threatens Turkey as well as Iraq. Any operation against Saddam will need Turkish bases and possibly troops. In 1991, only the most severe arm-twisting prevented the Israelis from counterattacking when Saddam launched missiles at them, and Ariel Sharon wasn't their leader then. Sources tell me the Israelis have operational plans to pre-empt a missile attack - which this time would deliver biological or chemical weapons - by disabling Iraqi missiles with an electromagnetic pulse produced by an air burst of a nuclear weapon. If Saddam threatens Israel, and Israel launches even a small tactical nuclear weapon, all bets are off, everywhere. Our strategy must include enough stealth and surprise to preclude the threat before the Israelis perceive they need to attack.
Because of its actions in Afghanistan, and its strategic location next to Iraq, Iran should be target No. 1. Iran is almost twice the size of Afghanistan, and is very similar in geography. Its military fought a 10-year war against Saddam, and endured poison-gas attacks. Their training and command structure give them much greater capability than the Taliban. We will have to put significant forces on the ground and mount an air campaign as thorough and relentless as we waged in Afghanistan. Air power will not do the job alone.
Boots in the mud, logistics to support them and naval forces will all come into play. Iran has more than 50 coastal combatants that can threaten our Navy in a "brown water" fight. Their air forces are big enough to be a legitimate threat. If we can operate from Tajikistan and Turkey like we operated against Iraq from Saudi Arabia, it can be done. If Iran can be won, so can Iraq. Operating from Iranian bases, America and its allies can render Saudi Arabia irrelevant to the coming war on Iraq.
Jed Babbin is a former deputy undersecretary of defense in the prior Bush administration.
----
Powell: Regime Change Needed in Iraq
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iraq.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Secretary of State Colin Powell says the United States might have to act alone to bring about a ``regime change'' in Iraq.
Powell told House members Wednesday that President Bush is considering ``the most serious set of options one might imagine'' for dealing with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
``Regime change is something the United States might have to do alone,'' Powell said. ``How to do it? I would not like to go into the details of the options.''
But he said Bush is ``examining a full range of options.''
On Thursday, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters that Bush has not decided on a course of action.
A freshly announced trip by Vice President Dick Cheney next month to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait -- all of which neighbor Iraq -- raised questions about whether Cheney would seek on that tour to build support for making Iraq the next target of Bush's war on terrorism.
``No, I would not urge you to reach that conclusion,'' Fleischer said.
The vice president is ``going to represent the president on a wide variety of issues, but the president has not made any determination to -- quote, unquote -- go into Iraq,'' Fleischer said.
In his State of the Union address last week, Bush named Iraq as part of an ``axis of evil'' along with Iran and North Korea.
Questioned at the House International Relations Committee hearing, Powell said United Nations inspectors must have an ``unfettered right'' to conduct long-term searches in Iraq for suspect weapons sites and that Bush ``is leaving no stone unturned'' as to what the United States might do if Saddam continues to resist inspection.
Many analysts, both inside and outside the U.S. government, suspect Iraq is trying to develop long-range missiles, biological and chemical weapons and possible nuclear devices as well.
Powell said U.S. intelligence has concluded that Iraq was unlikely to develop a nuclear weapon within a year or shortly thereafter.
``We still believe strongly in regime change in Iraq, and we look forward to the day when a democratic, representative government at peace with its neighbors leads Iraq to rejoin the family of nations,'' he said.
Bush has denounced Iraq as part of an ``axis of evil'' that includes Iran and North Korea -- countries developing weapons of mass destruction as well.
Powell dismissed an Iraqi offer to hold talks with the United Nations, an overture conveyed through the Arab League and accepted by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Powell said Iraq had to accept the return of accept U.N. inspectors, and that there was nothing to discuss otherwise.
By contrast, Powell said the Bush administration was open to ``reasonable conversation'' with Iran.
Powell said the United States had a long-standing list of grievances with Iran, including its support for terrorism and trying to send weapons to the Palestinians.
Iran's ``latest provocation,'' he said, was ``meddling in Afghanistan'' and unsettling the fragile interim government in Kabul.
``Get out of the `axis of evil' column and make a choice that we think your people want you to make and not the choice your nonelected government has been making in recent years,'' he said.
--------
Arabs Seen Rebuffing Cheney on Targeting Iraq
February 7, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-mideast-cheney.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Arab leaders will give U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney a generally stony reception if he uses his Middle Eastern tour in March to seek support for a war on Iraq.
Kuwait, victim of a 1990 Iraqi invasion, might welcome U.S. military action to oust Saddam Hussein and remove one link in what President Bush calls an ``axis of evil.''
In other Arab capitals, officials and analysts say, Cheney may get a terse response: ``Don't expect our help on Iraq while you back Israel's ever harsher repression of the Palestinians.''
Israel, which since the September 11 attacks on the United States has basked in American sympathy for its struggle with the Palestinians, will want to discuss perceived threats from Iraq, Iran -- also part of Bush's ``evil axis'' -- and maybe Syria.
NATO-member Turkey harbors deep misgivings about any effort to topple Saddam, but may have little choice but to play along if its superpower ally is bent on ``regime change'' in Baghdad.
``Cheney will try to get Arab backing for a strike on Iraq, but it will be very hard to convince Arab leaders,'' said Emad Gad of Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.
There has been widespread speculation that Iraq could be the next target of the war on terrorism after the U.S.-led campaign that toppled Afghanistan's Taliban protectors of Osama bin Laden, main suspect for the attacks on New York and Washington.
Cheney, on his first trip abroad since September 11, will make stops in 11 countries, including Israel and four states bordering Iraq -- Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait -- to discuss the Bush administration's war on global terrorism.
ARAFAT FROZEN OUT
Mary Matalin, a top Cheney aide, said on Wednesday he had no plans to visit the Palestinian territories or see Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. ``It's not a peace process trip,'' she said.
That, for many Arab leaders including America's traditional allies in the region, is the problem.
How, they wonder, can they be expected to collude in a war on a sanctions-hit Arab nation at a time when the United States is giving Israel a virtual free hand against the Palestinians?
``Our position is we will definitely not join any coalition to oust Saddam Hussein,'' an Egyptian official said bluntly.
Egypt, he said, would not stay silent if and when the United States attacked Iraq, but its criticism would be less harsh than that likely to be voiced elsewhere in the Arab world.
Jordan, the only Arab country apart from Egypt to have signed a peace treaty with Israel, said it could not endorse an attack on Iraq and would tell Cheney its views on the need to end Israeli-Palestinian violence and restart peace talks.
``We have repeatedly said that we oppose anystrike against any Arab country,'' Jordanian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Shaher Bak told Reuters.
``The suffering of the Iraqi people is a basic feature of this crisis,'' he said. ``We implement United Nations resolutions but we continue to work to lift the blockade.''
Iraq has been under U.N. sanctions since its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. For the past three years it has refused to readmit U.N. inspectors charged with supervising the dismantling of its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.
Nevertheless, some analysts argue that even Arab states publicly opposed to an attack on Iraq would quietly acquiesce if they if they could be sure it would lead to Saddam's overthrow.
ARAB PLEAS FALL ON DEAF EARS
In recent weeks, Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have all sought to push Washington to play a more active and even-handed role in defusing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which they view as the region's main source of instability and terrorism.
They have made little visible headway.
This week, Bush welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the White House for the third time in a year. He has yet to meet Arafat, whom he blames for failing to halt a Palestinian revolt against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Nuclear-capable Israel is gratified that Washington appears to have adopted its views on Iraq and Iran as implacable sponsors of terrorism on a quest for weapons of mass destruction with which to threaten the Jewish state and the West.
Zalman Shoval, a Sharon adviser and former ambassador to the United States, said he saw Cheney's visit partly as a mark of the ``close position both countries take with regard to the war on terrorism and the growing danger from the rogue states.''
He said that although the United States had a legitimate interest in staying friends with its traditional Arab allies, Israel, along with a few other states in the region, was its most reliable and stable ally in the war on terror.
``Certainly Israel will be a in a very central position in regard to these (U.S.) plans,'' he said. ``Israel...is under direct threat from the armaments program going on in Iran as well as the threat emanating from Iraq and, I would add, Syria.''
Shoval said he would be surprised if Cheney expanded his trip to Palestinian-ruled areas. ``America is engaged in a war against terror. Arafat is on the side of terror,'' he declared.
Cheney can expect a hero's welcome in Kuwait in token of his role as defense secretary during the 1991 Gulf War. Kuwait has a formal defense pact with the United States, unlike Saudi Arabia.
U.S.-Saudi relations have come under unusual strain since the September 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 suicide- hijackers were Saudi nationals. Riyadh says it opposes any attack on Iraq.
TURKISH DILEMMA
Turkey, which lets U.S. and British warplanes patrol a no-fly zone in Kurdish-held northern Iraq, has often said it is against any assault on its southeastern neighbor.
Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, who reiterated that stance to Bush during a visit to Washington in January, has written twice to Saddam in the past month, urging him to let U.N. inspectors return to avert the ``severe consequences'' of a U.S. attack.
Turkey fears that blitzing Baghdad could revive unrest among its own Kurds, damage the economy and possibly dismember Iraq.
But Sami Kohen, a columnist at Milliyet newspaper, said cash-strapped Ankara had to consider its reliance on Washington.
``Turkey depends so much on U.S. support, as we have seen with the IMF and other issues, that I don't see how Turkey really would be in a position to say 'no' to Bush (on Iraq) in case some kind of a request comes from him,'' Kohen said.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Renews Offer of Statehood
By Barry Schweid
AP Diplomatic Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; 11:10 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42697-2002Feb7?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon renewed an offer of eventual Palestinian statehood at the White House Thursday as President Bush demanded a 100 percent effort by Yasser Arafat to fight terrorism.
With Sharon at his side in the Oval Office, Bush said firmly: "Mr. Arafat has heard my message - I can't be any more clear about it - that he must do everything in his power to reduce terrorist attacks on Israel."
At the same time, Bush endorsed the Israeli leader's commitment to statehood, saying the Palestinians also had to recognize Israel's right to exist.
"I assured the prime minister that we would continue to keep pressure on Mr. Arafat to convince him that he must take serious, concrete, real steps to educe terrorist activities in the Middle East," Bush said.
Sharon, however, dismissed Arafat as "an obstacle to peace" and proposed a pressure campaign to find a new leadership for the Palestinians. Arafat has "chosen terror and formed a coalition of terror," Sharon said, and must be pressured "in order, I hope, to have an alternative leadership in the future."
Sharon and Bush met for 50 minutes, sharing a joint commitment to oppose terror. Bush gave no hint in his exchanges with reporters what steps he might take if Arafat continued to resist his demands. However, he said nothing about severing U.S. ties with the Palestinian leader, and Sharon said later the matter did not come up in their meeting.
Bush stressed the difficulties of the Palestinian people, whose lives have been constrained by Israel in its attempt to avert attacks.
"I am deeply concerned about the plight of the average Palestinians, the moms and dads who are trying to raise their children," he said.
Bush said he had $300 million in the budget to provide assistance to Palestinians, and Sharon, taking the cue, promised to do what he could in their behalf.
And Sharon, renewing a promise of statehood, said: "I believe at the end of the process we will see a Palestinian state. But only at the end, in the final steps" and after there was "a full cessation of terror, violence and incitement."
Bush said he was "at first surprised, then extremely disappointed" by Palestinian efforts to smuggle in 50 tons of Iranian weapons by ship.
For his part, Sharon accused Arafat of waging "a strategy of terror."
"I personally, myself and my government, regard Arafat as an obstacle to peace," the Israeli leader said.
Sharon, who has imposed virtual house arrest on Arafat on the West Bank, wanted Bush to cut more than a decade of U.S. contact that followed the Palestinian leader's public repudiation of terrorism.
But that is a door the Bush administration does not want to shut - at least for now - even as it applies heavy pressure on Arafat to curb Palestinian attacks on Israel, to make more arrests and to take responsibility for trying to smuggle in the Iranian rockets, mortar and explosives.
"I made our government's position about as clear as I could," Bush said. "I haven't changed my position."
Even as Sharon was visiting - it was his fourth meeting with Bush in a year - Israel struck a Palestinian government complex in the West Bank with missiles twice. The attack was in retaliation for an Islamic militant's assault on a Jewish settlement the day before that killed three Israelis.
Arafat "must do everything in his power to reduce terrorist attacks on Israel," Bush said. "At one point in time (Arafat) indicated to us he was going to do so and all of a sudden a ship loaded with explosives showed up that most of the world believes he was involved with."
The president noted that he was dispatching Vice President Dick Cheney on a tour of the Middle East. Cheney will visit Israel and eight Arab countries in mid-March.
He said one of Cheney's missions would be to look leaders of the region "in the eye and letting them know that when we say we're going to fight terror, we mean it."
"The vice president can deliver the message to many important world leaders that our government is absolutely committed to fighting terror and we expect people to join us in doing so," Bush said.
Sharon's visit was designed mostly to underscore U.S. support for Israel as it defends against a rash of Palestinian attacks.
Since the prime minister was not asking for a break with the Palestinian Authority itself, Bush and Sharon were really not in serious disagreement.
----
Israel Launches Missile Strike at Palestinian Complex
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel struck a Palestinian government complex in the West Bank with missiles twice Thursday in retaliation for an Islamic militant's assault on a Jewish settlement that killed three Israelis. Palestinian militiamen said they would increasingly target settlements.
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, meanwhile, addressed a prickly subject he has long evaded -- who will succeed him in the key posts of Palestinian Authority president and PLO chief. But Arafat, 72, who has no plans to step down, sowed rather than dispelled confusion: suggesting two different confidants to head the authority and the PLO.
The Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Hamra, an isolated Jewish settlement of 40 families in the West Bank's Jordan Valley. The assault marked the first time in 16 months of fighting that Israeli civilians were killed in their home, further raising the level of the nation's anxiety.
In the 30-minute assault, Hamas gunman Mohammed Ziad Khalili, 26, from Nablus, cut through the settlement fence, killed an Israeli soldier, then entered a house and took Miri Ohana, 50, and her 11-year-old daughter hostage. The gunman killed the girl and wounded Ohana before soldiers killed him with several shots to the head, said an army commander in the area, Brig. Gen. Udi Shani. Ohana died en route to a hospital.
In response, Israel launched two air strikes against the main government and prison complex in Nablus. Early Thursday, F-16 warplanes struck the site, injuring 11 Palestinians; 20 hours later, helicopters fired two more missiles. Neither strike caused major damage.
After the first air strike, Palestinian wardens released 25 Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners to get them out of harm's way, while 103 suspected informers for Israel remained in custody.
In Jenin, dozens of gunmen stormed a makeshift prison in an apartment building and freed seven detainees, meeting no resistance from police.
Among those freed in Nablus were Mahmoud Tawalbeh and Ali Safouri, two Islamic Jihad leaders appearing on a list of 33 top militants the United States wants to see behind bars. Tawalbeh is suspected of having sent more than a dozen assailants into Israel in recent months.
A leader of the Al Aqsa Brigades, a militia linked to Arafat's Fatah movement, said Thursday that the group was escalating its attacks.
``We started with shooting attacks, then roadside bombs ... and now we are sending attackers into Israel and the settlements,'' said the militiaman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, for fear of Israeli retribution.
Palestinian militants have launched several attacks on settlements in recent months, but only two resulted in Israeli deaths -- an incursion in October into the Elei Sinai settlement in Gaza and Wednesday's assault on Hamra.
The Al Aqsa Brigades on Thursday released a video of five masked gunmen running up a hill while shooting at unspecified targets. The men in the video said they were practicing how to attack a settlement.
Fatah leaders said they oppose attacks on Israeli civilians and continue to support Arafat's Dec. 16 cease-fire declaration but that it was increasingly difficult to control the gunmen.
``If the Israeli aggression against our people continues, the Fatah military wing ... might take extreme steps such as attacking civilians and settlers, attacking any Israeli target they can reach,'' said Yousef Harb, a Fatah leader in Nablus.
In additional violence Thursday, a Palestinian was killed when a bomb exploded near an Israeli checkpoint between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, said Palestinian security officials, who added that he may have been planting the bomb when it went off. The Israeli military was checking. Separately, an Israeli was lightly wounded in a shooting attack near the West Bank town of Tulkarem.
In Washington, President Bush insisted Arafat ``must do everything in his power to fight terror.'' But Bush rebuffed a request by visiting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that the United States severe ties with Arafat.
``Mr. Arafat has heard my message. I can't be any more clear about it,'' Bush said after a White House meeting with Sharon.
In an interview published Thursday in the Egyptian magazine Al-Mussawar, Arafat indirectly suggested two men -- Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia and PLO Secretary-General Mahmoud Abbas -- as possible successors.
Arafat told the magazine that under the law, the Palestinian parliament speaker would be caretaker president of the Palestinian Authority for 60 days, until new elections are held. The PLO secretary-general becomes interim leader of that organization.
Arafat has been the PLO leader since the 1960s and in 1996 was elected Palestinian Authority president. No new elections are scheduled.
-------- nato
'Small, strong ally'
February 8, 2002
Embassy Row
by James Morrison
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020208-93347885.htm
Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga this week declared her Baltic nation a strong ally of the United States, as she met Washington officials to promote Latvia's case for admission to NATO.
"We are a small nation but a strong ally," she told reporters after meeting Vice President Richard B. Cheney. Mr. Cheney praised Latvia's achievements and told Mrs. Vike-Freiberga that the Bush administration wants to help her nation build strong democratic institutions and combat corruption, the Baltic News Service reported.
Mr. Cheney assured her that Russia will have no veto over NATO decisions as Moscow develops closer relations with the Western alliance.
"No country outside NATO will have the right to veto NATO decisions," he said. "The U.S. recognizes the right of any candidate to be admitted to the organization on the basis of its achievements."
Mrs. Vike-Freiberga received more encouraging news from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
He offered her "full U.S. support for Latvia's ongoing efforts to integrate fully into Euro-Atlantic institutions," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said Tuesday.
"[Mr. Powell] also praised her efforts in the areas of integrating minority groups into Latvian society, fostering economic reform and integrity and transparency in government and encouraging reconciliation with history," Mr. Reeker added.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russian Copter Crashes in Chechnya
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Chechnya.html
VLADIKAVKAZ, Russia (AP) -- A Russian military helicopter searching for another missing chopper crashed and exploded in Chechnya on Thursday, killing seven people on board, officials said.
It was the third loss of a Russian helicopter in the breakaway republic in less than two weeks.
The Mi-8 was carrying three crew members, two doctors and five rescue workers when it crashed soon after takeoff on Thursday, near the Chechen capital Grozny, said Alexander Machevsky, spokesman for Russia's Chechnya envoy Sergei Yastrzhembsky.
Initial reports said there were eight dead and two suvivors, but the Defense Ministry later revised the toll to seven dead and three survivors.
The helicopter fell from 165 feet and exploded when it hit the ground, Air Force spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying. The reason for the crash was unclear. A government commission has been sent to investigate.
The helicopter had been part of a search operation looking for an Mi-24 helicopter that went missing over the weekend in Chechnya. That helicopter had last contacted controllers from an area about nine miles south of Grozny.
Last week, an Mi-8 helicopter flying over Chechnya exploded after taking off, killing all 14 aboard including several high-ranking officers of Russia's Interior Ministry. The cause of the explosion remains unclear.
Russian troops lost a 1994-1996 war in Chechnya that left the republic with de-facto independence. The troops returned in fall 1999 after rebel attacks on a neighboring region and apartment explosions blamed on the rebels that killed about 300.
-------- space
Space Transformation Transcript, Under Secretary of the Air Force Peter Teets
Thursday, Feb. 7, 2002 - 1:02p.m. EST
http://www.defenselink.mil/cgi-bin/dlprint.cgi
(Also participating were Dennis Fitzgerald, deputy director, National Reconnaissance Office; Maj. Gen. Joe Sovey, director of Air Force Space Acquisition; Lt. Gen. Brian Arnold, program executive officer for Air Force Space and commander of Space and Missiles Systems Center; Maj. Gen. (Select) Michael A. Hamel, director of National Security Space Integration; Vice Adm. Richard W. Mayo, director, Space, Information Warfare, Command and Control, OPNAV (N6); Lt. Gen. Joseph M. Cosumano, Jr., commanding general, U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command; U.S. Army Space Command; and National Security Space Architect, Brig. Gen. Stephen J. Ferrell)
Brig. Gen. Ron Rand (Director, Air Force Public Affairs): Good afternoon, everybody. Today's briefing on space transformation will be all on the record. The briefer will be Undersecretary of the Air Force and Director of the NRO [National Reconnaissance Office] Pete Teets. After his opening comments, he'll be glad to take your questions.
Mr. Teets, over to you.
Teets: Thank you, Ron.
Well, good afternoon. I'm pleased to be here, and I would like to start by telling you how honored I am, frankly, to have been given the opportunity to take on this new challenge and do this job. I have enjoyed the strong support from a lot of important players, both in the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. I was appointed on December 13th last, actually. And the support I've received from Secretary of the Air Force Dr. James Roche, the support I've received from the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] George Tenet, the support from, Secretary Rumsfeld himself has been really gratifying to me and, frankly, empowering. And I feel as if I have an opportunity now to make a difference and move us forward in the national security space arena.
The mission that I've been tasked with is to bring together the military and national elements of space to assure that we're providing the nation with the best national security capabilities while still being good stewards of the American tax dollar. And I should say in terms of the military space equation, I've also enjoyed the support of not only the Air Force, but the Army and Navy as well. And as a matter of fact, we have here today with us Admiral Dick Mayo. And he'll be available for questions, if you like, afterward, as well as General Joe Cosumano from the Army Space and Missile Defense Command. So the support is widespread, and I think there's an evident need for bringing together national security space components.
Our vision for national security space is one which takes advantage of the best we have to offer from both the military and the national space communities, and I intend to create an integrated national security space capability that's better than anything that we have today.
Shown on the left here is a chart that kind of summarizes our key goals to provide this nation with, first of all, universal situational awareness. And I'll just say, in universal situational awareness, that word "universal" has a temporal component as well as a spatial component. And I think what we've found is that in moving ahead with this war on terrorism, it's going to be important for us to have persistent intelligence -- universal in terms of time, but also universal in terms of space, and on the surface, under the surface, et cetera. And so, it's going to be important for us to develop some breakthrough technologies and implement techniques that use the best of both military and national systems to implement the mission, all, of course, in an effort to support the joint war fighting concept that has been so effective in Afghanistan.
It's important that this vitally important space asset be assured -- that is to say, that we have assured access to space -- and that we also are able to protect those assets. I think it vitally important that we have a cadre of space professionals that are dedicated to this mission, and I'm on a course to make certain that we have the best and the brightest involved in this national security space endeavor. We also need to integrate the cultures of our military and intelligence community space professionals. And clearly, our focus will be on mission success.
Now, to make this vision a reality, my first objective is to implement the recommendations of the National Security Space Commission. And to do so, we're going to begin exploiting the best practices of the military space and the NRO communities to make the world's best space forces even better. We're also making a few organizational changes to make this transformation smoother and transparent for our national and military customers. And shown here on my right is an organization chart, which represents an organization that I do intend to implement in the near term. And I'd like to start by just introducing a few of the key players to you and briefing summarizing the roles that they'll play.
I'd start first with Mr. Dennis Fitzgerald. Dennis is currently the deputy director of the NRO. He has played a vitally important role in the transition of my coming on board. Dennis has over 35 years of engineering and space background and experience in both industry but, mostly, frankly, within the NRO community. And he's been a vitally important component in the success that the NRO has enjoyed over the years. He has been doing an outstanding job, frankly, of running the day-to-day operations of the NRO as I begin to focus on the larger national security space equation.
And to that end I have also decided to create a new deputy for military space so that we can have some focus on the military side of the space equation all the time. And I'm in the final throes, frankly, of filling that position, and have in mind an extremely qualified and competent individual, but am not prepared to announce it today.
Another new office that we've created is the Directorate of National Security Space Integration, shown in the bottom middle row here. And this office will be responsible for implementing the best practices of military and national space programs and will help transform our programs and pool our resources to most effectively meet the needs of our military and national customers. I've asked Major General-select Mike Hamel to lead this office. Mike -- Mike is another consummate professional who has over 25 years of space experience, all in the United States Air Force. And I must say that it's unusual to find people in the United States Air Force that have had dedicated careers to the space field, but Mike is surely one of those.
Another one, actually, is Major General Joe Sovey. Joe is the new director of Air Force Space Acquisition with over 25 years of acquisition experience. Again, he's had important roles in the launch systems business, important roles back here in headquarters, Air Force space activity.
Lt. Gen. Brian Arnold is the program executive officer for Air Force Space and commander of Space and Missiles Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base. Brian brings over 30 years of air and space experience and is currently, as I say, commander at Space and Missile Systems Center, but will become the PEO - Program Executive Officer -- for Air Force Space.
Finally, Brigadier General Steve Ferrell. Steve is the new national security space architect. And he brings not only impressive space credentials, but a strong warfighter perspective to space.
Together this makes up a tremendous team to leverage our unparalleled talent from the military, intelligence community and industry to provide the nation with the best space capabilities to meet the challenges of the 21st century.
With that I'll conclude my formal remarks, and we together stand ready to take your questions.
Charlie?
Q: Mr. Teets, you talked about new technologies. A layperson's question for the great unwashed, if you would. What are some of the -- could you give us some examples of the limitations now for gathering intelligence and other information from space, and what new technologies are on the horizon, the kind of thing you want to develop to address that?
Teets: I'd be happy to. One of the things that I think we've learned well from the conflict in Afghanistan is that while the intelligence collection capabilities have been excellent, we need to add persistence to the equation. That is to say, you know, satellites orbit the Earth every -- if they're in low-Earth orbit, every 97 minutes, or thereabouts. And you'd like to have more long-dwell. You'd like to be able to have a focused view of hot spots on the face of the Earth that is not intermittent, but more continuous. And that's what I mean when I talk about universal situational awareness. Universal has this temporal component. You'd like to know all the time what's going on around the face of the globe.
Then the other thing that --
Q: Do you mean more satellites in stationary orbit or --
Teets: That would be one way of achieving it, yes. The other would be to develop new technology -- which will get to the second part of your question, Charlie -- but the other way would be to develop some new technology which would allow us to have excellent collection capabilities at higher altitudes, and higher altitudes are more persistent dwell times.
And then, more directly to your other question, I think one of the great powers of the NRO has been the revolutionary, breakthrough technology that the NRO has made over the course of its 40 years of existence. And I would like very much to see us with additional research and development activity that will allow us to achieve more breakthrough technology. And I think I best leave it at that. But I'll just amplify to just say, find ways to gather intelligence information, find out the enemy's secrets.
Q: When you talk about capabilities, higher altitudes, are there limitations that these satellites at high altitudes and stationary orbit -- are there limitations that they currently have, for instance, listening to telephone conversations or seeing license plates, or whatever? Are there limitations that they have now that you want to --
Teets: Well, I did say that typically speaking, the farther away you are from an object, if you wanted to take its picture, the larger the lens you would need. And so it becomes a question -- a technology question, really, to figure out how to best improve persistence in the collection equation.
Please.
Q: Sir, the early budget request includes a substantial amount of money for acceleration of Space Based Radar. Could you speak a little bit about what activities will be accelerated, how much sooner it might be ready? And as part of that -- those funds were added on apparently as part of the Nuclear Posture Review meeting -- enhancing conventional capabilities. And I don't quite get the connection between the two, so maybe you could speak about that.
Teets: Sure.
I would say that, on the overall question of Space Based Radar, we are in the process right now of putting together an acquisition strategy, and clearly the acquisition strategy needs to be mindful of our new organizational construct, which will allow us to use the best capabilities of both the NRO and the military space operations. So we'll be working hard to find out how we can combine activity in that direction to yield a smart acquisition strategy.
Now as to why or how the additional funding came into being, I'm going to ask General Joe Sovey to come up and maybe handle that. I'm not sure why it was attached to the Nuclear Posture -- line item or whatever, either.
Joe, are you up-to-date with that?
Okay, I'm just --
Mike, can you handle that one?
Okay.
Hamel: Sure.
This is General Mike Hamel, sir.
Sir, I think the real point here is, is that in the December time period, as we're going through the program in the budget-decision process, there was a number of related topics that came together. And at that point in time, there was a series of space programs that was -- that concludes a time that it got brought together in that single package. So there was no direct connection, in terms of the Nuclear Posture Review and its findings and those specific budgetary adds.
Q: With those funds, do you expect that Space Based Radar will be ready sooner than the 2008-2010 time frame?
Hamel: The decision was based upon trying to accelerate from the basic program the ability to be able to feel the initial launch capability by the year 2010, and that would support it in the near years.
Teets: Thanks, Mike.
Yes, please.
Q: Can you talk about organization -- how you're going to work within the building, NRO? Talk a bit about, if you could, about NASA, how you want to work with folks over there -- specifically, this idea of combining Air Force's RLV [Reusable Launch Vehicle] requirements with space-launch initiative. Where do you see that going over the next couple of months?
Teets: Well, I'm interested in exploring that whole notion with NASA.
I should say that I've had a note from Sean O'Keefe, and at the right time I'll be meeting with Sean to discuss that very question.
I know that there have been some wheels put in motion to see if we can't leverage technology, that they're -- they would leverage some from us, we would leverage some from them, in looking at RLV development. And I think it's very worthwhile to do that. I think it wise for us to have a partnership with NASA and help them in ways that are possible for us and vice versa.
So we'll -- I believe historically there have been quarterly meetings. We'll certainly keep that up. When Sean and I meet, why, we'll discuss the details of how we'll go forward together.
Yes, please.
Q: Mr. Teets, I've already heard some criticism from industry about your new organizational plan -- specifically, the idea of having two senior deputies with a lot of real powers behind them. Some critics feel that this will maintain the status quo and negate the benefit of bringing together the NRO and Air Force Space Operations under you -- the intent of the Space Commission recommendation. Could you respond to that a little bit?
Teets: Yes, I would be happy to respond to that. There are really two parts to my response.
The first part would be that I'm concerned that as we move forward in this transformation, we have a large constellation of vitally important national security assets in space right now. So day-to-day operations are not just ho-hum. Day-to-day operations need to be attended to. They need to be watched over carefully. We need to have rapid decision-making capability for answering on-orbit kinds of problems and difficulties. And frankly, I'm doing this in an effort to allocate time better. I find I'm pretty busy these days, and I would like to have time to reflect on the overall issue of national security space -- blending cultures -- how do we invest R&D dollars to achieve a vision of universal situational awareness, all those kinds of questions.
And so Dennis Fitzgerald, deputy director at the NRO, is fully capable of handling all of those day-to-day kinds of issues that arise. And at the same time, I think it important for us to have a similar role being played for military space, because certainly there are pressing operational issues associated with military space operations that need immediate attention.
And so that's the primary driver for it. But I want to also say that I think Dennis, and also the person who will become the new deputy for Military Space, I think of them as partners on a management team, so to speak. And I would like them to help me oversee this Directorate of National Security Space Integration. I'd like to have them feel part of this national security space team immediately, and as we look at how do we integrate black-and-white world best practices, have them involved in that process as well.
So it's really -- my answer back to a critic of what we're announcing today would simply be: attention to ongoing operations, part of an integrated team to help blend cultures. And I think it's a good construct for doing that.
Q: You're going to be dealing with the bigger picture issue, while these guys do more day to day?
Teets: That would be the fundamental answer, yes.
Q: Okay.
Teets: Please.
Q: In that vein, if Mr. Fitzgerald is going to be responsible for sort of handling day-to-day operations, is it fair to say that perhaps this deputy for Military Space will also handle day-to-day operations under Air Force Space Command, because if he's over, you know, a three-star general -- three, two-star generals, he's going to have to have some serious weight.
Teets: Well, you've put your finger on one of the fundamental current differences in the way National Security Space operates. The NRO operates its own constellation of assets. In Military Space, US CINCSPACE, actually, has overall responsibility for all U.S. military space assets, but Air Force Space Command plays a role in the actual operations. And that's a uniformed Military Space [position].
What the deputy for Military Space in this context will be doing is, frankly, fighting acquisition fires. You know, it turns out that in the acquisition world, General Arnold has a lot of important programs. There are other important acquisition programs in other places as well, and they have immediate needs for response to time- critical decisions.
And again, one of the fundamental drives that I have is to reduce cycle time in decision-making. We're trying to flatten this organization. We're trying to have short lines of authority and be able to move rapidly to adjust to the changing conditions that are out there.
Please?
Q: I have a couple of systems questions.
One, can you give us a snapshot of the FIA [Future Imagery Architecture] program? There have been some stories out -- not quoting anybody -- and implying Boeing's in trouble with cost and schedule. Could you either confirm that or debunk it and give us a snapshot of where the system is at this point in terms of meeting its milestones?
Teets: Tony, I don't feel comfortable at the moment talking about FIA in any level of detail. I would tell you that the FIA program is currently on course and that we're going to be attending to it with a great deal of focus.
Q: Can you strip that with -- what "on course" means, cost and schedule performance-wise?
Teets: I would tell you that in today's assessment, Boeing is fundamentally on schedule and on cost. I would say -- because I'm not trying to be vague, I just don't want to get into a classified kind of a discussion, obviously, but I'd just say that I fundamentally have some concerns in the forward-looking plan that I intend to address and hopefully avoid downstream problem.
Q: Speaking of downstream problems that are current today, two satellite programs with real issues, the Advanced EHF [extremely high frequency] and SBIRS-High [space-based infrared system-High]. How did they get into those well-publicized cost and schedule problems that are going to cost you billions more over the FYDP [Future Years Defense Plan]?
Teets: Well, I'll just say that with respect to the SBIRS- High program, we have -- actually, Secretary Roche and Chief of Staff John Jumper formed an independent review team. It was headed up by Ken Israel (retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Kenneth R. Israel) and Dave Kier, actually, and they had a group of capable, knowledgeable, good people who went out, visited Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, they talked to the Space and Missile Center System Program Office director, and they came back and briefed us on the results of their findings.
And fundamentally, I'll say that my bottom line would be that there was plenty of blame to spread around with respect to poor program management and direction over the course of the last, say, year or two. When I say blame to spread around, I mean that the government had some issues associated with allocation of requirements. Not the top-level requirements.
I was interested and in some ways glad to see that at the top level the requirements for SBIRS have been stable since 1996. But the drive requirements weren't properly allocated. And that would be the fault of both contractor and government. And it's generated a very significant problem. We are currently very actively engaged in, really, a parallel path that will culminate about the end of April. We're asking the SBIRS high program's SPO [System Program Office] director to take a hard look at restructuring the SBIRS program. And I can assure you that this problem has the attention of Lockheed Martin and its highest management. And we'll see what that looks like over the course of the next couple months.
In parallel, we're going to be asking the NRO to lead some options looks at how could these requirements -- these are vital requirements. These are requirements that can't really be traded away. And so, we'll be asking the NRO to look for creative options that, if we're not pleased, if we're not satisfied with corrective actions and the restructured SBIRS high program, we'll have options to go another direction.
Please.
Q: I have two questions, both of them fairly simple. Is your deputy for military space a three-star or a four-star billet? And also, can you give an overview, please, of your '03 -- at least your unclassified '03 budget request, and a quick sketch of some of the things you're looking at?
Teets: Okay. First questions first.
Deputy for military space I anticipate to be a civilian. And I think this'll be a person that'll be a highly capable, highly qualified individual with a lot of experience in military space.
With respect to the FY03 budget, I think it's fair to say that the president's overall budget has been submitted to the Congress. We do anticipate some, in that budget, additional funding in '03. And we're planning, frankly, some additional funding in the out years as well. And I think it will enable --
You know, I'm not real comfortable with going through an overall numbers-kind of discussion at this point. I would say that it -- I believe that there will be significant -- additional resources applied that will allow us to do some additional research and development and execute a national security space plan that can meet the goals of the nation.
I'll tell you what. It's about 1:30, and I'm going to just take one more question, and then I'm going to have to run.
Q: Sir, you talked about a lot of good space assets here. I wondered what you think about the value of pursuing anti-satellite capabilities, like perhaps the Army's KE-ASAT [Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite] program or tests down the road, such as lasing satellites or looking at the use of directed energy in space.
Teets: Well, I think one of the real important things that we need to look at now is how we are going to protect and defend our space assets. It is clear that these assets are vital to our national security, and it's important for us to know at what point in the future will those assets be threatened in some way, and how do we see those threats developing and evolving, and then put together a plan that will allow us to protect those assets. I'd say we're very -- the planning for that is in its very formative stages, and so I can't give you a lot of detail or a lot of specifics on the matter, but I can tell you that I'd be happy to talk to you in another six or eight months and hopefully have a more definitive plan to discuss with you.
And I do think that would best be the last question, and I thank y'all for being here. It's a pleasure to have an opportunity to chat with you.
Q: Thank you.
THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS PREPARED BY THE FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE INC., WASHINGTON, D.C. FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE IS A PRIVATE COMPANY. FOR OTHER DEFENSE RELATED TRANSCRIPTS NOT AVAILABLE THROUGH THIS SITE, CONTACT FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE AT (202) 347-1400.
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2002/t02072002_t0207st.html
-------- spy agencies
CIA warns of new al Qaeda threat
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 7, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20020207-20996312.htm
CIA Director George Tenet said yesterday that al Qaeda terrorist attacks remain a real threat, with cells working secretly around the world on new and more deadly strikes.
"Al Qaeda's leaders still at large are working to reconstitute the organization and resume its terrorist operations," Mr. Tenet said in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"We must be prepared for a long war, and we must not falter," he said.
Terrorists have planned high-profile strikes on government and private facilities, landmarks and infrastructure such as airports, harbors and dams, he said.
"High-profile events, such as the Olympics or last weekend's Super Bowl, also fit the terrorists' interest in striking another blow within the United States that would command worldwide media attention," Mr. Tenet said.
The CIA director also said al Qaeda, the Islamic militant group led by Osama bin Laden, has ties to Saddam Hussein's Iraqi government.
Iraq and al Qaeda have a common aim in their opposition to the United States and the Saudi Arabian monarchy, suggesting "tactical cooperation between them is possible, even though Saddam is well aware that such activity would carry serious consequences," Mr. Tenet said.
Iraqi links to al Qaeda were raised by the Czech Republic last year after Czech intelligence uncovered a meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence agent and Mohamed Atta, believed to be the operations chief for the September 11 attacks.
Since September 11, almost 1,000 al Qaeda terrorists in more than 60 nations have been arrested and the group's training structure in Afghanistan has been dismantled, Mr. Tenet said.
In a detailed briefing on national security threats, Mr. Tenet, flanked by intelligence chiefs from the FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency and State Department, outlined the key dangers:
•Al Qaeda is working on "multiple-attack plans" and putting cells in place to carry them out.
•Terrorists could attack U.S. nuclear plants or chemical industry sites using conventional means "to cause widespread toxic or radiological damage."
•Iran continues to support terrorist groups and has sent arms to Palestinian terrorists and the group Hezbollah.
"Tehran also has failed to move decisively against al Qaeda members who have relocated to Iran from Afghanistan," Mr. Tenet said.
•Attacks could be launched by al Qaeda cells in major European and Middle Eastern cities, and al Qaeda is connected with groups in Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia and the Philippines.
•There are fears al Qaeda and other terrorists will attack using nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
"Terrorist groups worldwide have ready access to information on chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons via the Internet, and we know that al Qaeda was working to acquire some of the most dangerous chemical agents and toxins," Mr. Tenet said.
•Terrorists could attempt to attack the United States by conducting cyber-strikes designed to cripple U.S. electronic-based infrastructures.
•Tensions between India and Pakistan remain high over a Dec. 13 terrorist attack in India, and the two nations could resort to nuclear weapons. "We are deeply concerned that a conventional war, once begun, could escalate into a nuclear confrontation," Mr. Tenet said.
The CIA director, appearing in public for the first time since September 11, also defended the U.S. intelligence community from charges that it failed to anticipate and prevent the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Mr. Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he welcomed congressional inquiries into "our record on terrorism." "It is a record of discipline, strategy, focus and action," Mr. Tenet said. "We're proud of that record."
Sen. Richard Shelby, Alabama Republican, asked Mr. Tenet how American intelligence agencies could be "utterly unaware" that terrorists were planning the September 11 attacks.
Mr. Tenet responded that intelligence agencies suspected an attack by al Qaeda inside the United States but lacked details of when or where they would take place.
"The shock was where it occurred, not the fact that the attack occurred," Mr. Tenet said.
In the spring and summer of 2001, "we saw [speculative] threat reporting about massive casualties against the United States," Mr. Tenet said.
"These threat reportings had very little texture with regard to what was occurring inside the United States," he said. "We again launched a massive disruption effort. We know that we stopped three or four American facilities from being bombed overseas. We know we saved many American lives."
"We never had the texture that said the day, time and place of the event inside the United States would result in September 11. It was not the result of the failure of attention and discipline and focus and consistent effort, and the American people need to understand that."
Mr. Shelby said the CIA has a "rocky history of intelligence failures," including the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military barracks in Saudi Arabia, terrorist bombings in 1998 of U.S. embassies, the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.
"Examined individually, each of these failures, tragic in their own way, may not suggest a continuing or systemic problem," Mr. Shelby said. "But, however, taken as a whole, and culminating with the events of September the 11th, they present a disturbing series of intelligence shortfalls that I believe expose some serious problems in the structure of and approaches taken by our intelligence community."
Dale Watson, the FBI's counterterrorism chief, said the FBI has opened "hundreds" of investigations on suspected al Qaeda terrorists or supporters since September 11.
The 19 hijackers who carried out the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks entered the United States legally and were not known to any of the FBI's sources, Mr. Watson said. "There were no contacts with anybody we were looking at," he said.
The 19 Middle Eastern terrorists - all young men from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon - also fit the profile of some 70,000 people who entered the United States since 1999, Mr. Watson said, noting that conducting investigations of terrorists is "a huge problem."
Mr. Tenet said the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missile-delivery systems is a serious danger.
Russia, China and North Korea are the main suppliers, with Russia helping Iran's nuclear and long-range missile program; China supplying missile goods to Pakistan and Iran; and North Korea selling missiles to Iran, Egypt, Syria and Libya.
----
Tenet: Warns of Worsening Economy
By John J. Lumpkin
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; 6:11 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37510-2002Feb7?language=printer
WASHINGTON -- Between describing threats of hurtling missiles and potential terrorist attacks, CIA Director George J. Tenet and other top U.S. intelligence officials are warning of worsening economic conditions and demographics in parts of the world - conditions that stand to create more terrorists.
Some of the largest populations of young people in the world are growing up in parts of the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa that lack stable economies that will provide them meaningful work, Tenet said in prepared remarks delivered to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
"The problems that terrorists exploit - poverty, alienation and ethnic tensions - will grow more acute over the next decade," Tenet said. "This will especially be the case in those parts of the world that have served as the most fertile recruiting grounds for Islamic extremist groups."
The CIA chief, who is directing much of the U.S. covert war against al-Qaida, also said the educational systems in many Islamic countries breed hatred for the United States.
"Primary and secondary education in parts of the Muslim world is often dominated by an interpretation of Islam that teaches intolerance and hatred," Tenet said. "The graduates of these schools - 'madrasas' - provide the foot soldiers for many of the Islamic militant groups that operate throughout the Muslim world."
The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency - a Pentagon organization more frequently given to estimates of foreign military capabilities than analyses of socioeconomic conditions - also described how the losers in globalization can turn to extremist movements.
"The conditions they live in are fertile ground for political, ethnic, ideological and religious extremism, and their frustration is increasingly directed at the United States and the West," said Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson in written remarks submitted to the committee. "In the globalized world we ignore them at our own peril."
The intelligence officials also warned of more immediate threats in Wednesday's remarks.
In his first testimony to Congress since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Tenet said al-Qaida remains the greatest immediate threat to U.S. national security, despite the destruction of Osama bin Laden's overt military and training operations in Afghanistan.
Al-Qaida's terrorists have considered attacks against high-profile U.S. government or private facilities, famous landmarks and airports, bridges, harbors, dams, nuclear power plants and industrial chemical facilities, Tenet said.
"High-profile events such as the Olympics or last weekend's Super Bowl also fit the terrorists' interests in striking another blow within the United States that would command worldwide media attention," Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Security officials at the Olympics have said they are not aware of any specific threat to the games.
"Their modus operandi is to continue to have multiple attack plans in the works simultaneously and to have al-Qaida cells in place to conduct them," Tenet said.
The U.S.-led war on terrorism has brought arrests of nearly 1,000 al-Qaida operatives in more than 60 countries, and ruined the group's ability to train recruits in Afghan camps, he said.
Tenet was also questioned about the US intelligence's failure to detect the Sept. 11 attacks ahead of time.
"Why were we utterly unaware of the planning and execution of the Sept. 11 attacks? In other words, what went wrong?" asked Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.
Tenet defended his agency, but said that the United States never will be able to foresee all attacks.
"We know they will continue to plan, we know they will hurt us again," Tenet said. "We have to minimize their ability to do so because there is no perfection in this business."
He said the CIA had known "in broad terms" last summer - and had warned U.S. officials - that bin Laden might attack targets inside the United States. But the CIA had no specific knowledge predicting the Sept. 11 attacks.
The CIA did thwart attacks on three or four U.S. facilities overseas last summer, Tenet said. It has disrupted "numerous terrorist attacks since Sept. 11, and we will continue to do so."
Tenet also detailed threats from other sources, saying Iran remains the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism, Iraq hopes to rebuild its military and weapons of mass destruction programs and North Korea is exporting its missile technologies.
-------- us
Fresh U.S. Air Strikes Stoke Bin Laden Speculation
February 7, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-attack-afghan.html
KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. planes bombed suspected Taliban and al Qaeda positions in eastern Afghanistan on Thursday as a missile attack by a pilotless CIA drone triggered speculation that Osama bin Laden himself had been killed.
U.S. officials in Washington said they believed a tall al Qaeda leader had been killed in the CIA missile strike in the east of the country but the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency said three Afghan civilians had been killed.
Elsewhere, about 600 fighters loyal to warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum refused to leave the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, defying a U.N.-backed security plan and undermining interim leader Hamid Karzai's efforts to crack down on warlordism.
On the road north from the capital Kabul, survivors of an avalanche near the entrance to the Salang Tunnel, the world's highest, said that up to 20 people may have frozen or suffocated to death in the incident.
A U.S. official in Washington said a CIA Predator drone had fired a Hellfire missile at a group of men thought to include a senior al Qaeda official.
``The central figure had a close encounter of the worst kind with a Hellfire missile,'' the official said.
But the private AIP news agency said a U.S. missile hit a group of young men in the Zawar Khili area, 20 miles southwest of Khost town and 10 miles from the Pakistani border on Tuesday night.
``Two people were killed on the spot and one died on the way to hospital,'' the AIP said. AIP, citing tribal elders, identified the three dead men as Munir Ahmad, Jehangir Khan and Daraz Khan. ``They were standing and chatting when hit by the missile,'' said the elders. They also said there were no al Qaeda people in the area, AIP said.
Bin Laden, who is believed to be between 6 feet 4 inches and 6 feet 6 inches tall, is accused by the United States of masterminding the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States.
CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that he did not know whether bin Laden was dead or alive.
OLD RIVALRIES
As questions over the fate of bin Laden persisted an Afghan official in eastern Paktia province said U.S. aircraft bombed the Mafazatoo area of Gorboz district, about 12 miles to the south of the town of Khost, on Tuesday and late on Wednesday.
``The bombing was very heavy,'' Wazir Zadran, brother of the ousted governor of Paktia province, told Reuters.
``Gorboz is an area where we have al Qaeda and Taliban people,'' he said. He said he had no more details or information about casualties.
Early last month U.S. aircraft flew sustained bombing raids over areas near Khost but there have been few attacks in the last two weeks.
As the U.S. bombing has petered out in the wake of the defeat of the Taliban, old tribal and ethnic rivalries have resurfaced as factions jockey for power in the post-Taliban era, throwing into question the interim government's authority.
In the north about 40 fighters were said to have been killed last week in clashes between commanders loyal to Dostum's mainly ethnic Uzbek movement, the Junbish-i-Millie, and the mainly ethnic Tajik Jamiat-i-Islami movement led by Mohammed Atta.
Dostum is deputy defense minister while the ethnic Tajik force is seen as loyal to Defense Minister Mohammad Fahim, leading to fears the northern feud could pit the interim government's two top defense officials against each other.
A campaign backed by the United Nations and all main ethnic groups in the area has been launched to drive armed men from Mazar but police said hundreds of Dostum's men were defying the order.
``There are about 600 men there and they have refused to obey orders to leave the city,'' the region's deputy police chief, General Abdullah Aziz, told Reuters. ``At the moment we have left them as they are. We plan to talk to General Dostum about it and see what he decides.''
STEP FORWARD AS TRAGEDY STRIKES
Despite the worry over factional violence, the war-battered country moved a step closer to broad-based government as a commission tasked with convening a Loya Jirga, or assembly of ethnic leaders, to choose the country's future leader, began work.
Karzai, who in recent weeks has traveled to various countries including Japan, China, the United States and Britain, would visit eastern neighbor Pakistan on Friday, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said.
Pakistan backed his Taliban predecessors but rallied to President Bush's war on terrorism which toppled the fundamentalist militia, bin Laden's protectors, after the September 11 attacks.
Tragedy struck at the Soviet-built Salang Tunnel, the world's highest at 11,034 ft, on Wednesday. Shocked travelers survived a blizzard and freezing temperatures but said they had seen or heard reports of up to 20 dead.
``I saw one boy of around 10 years old who had frozen to death,'' said one truck driver around three miles from the tunnel entrance. ``There were other deaths as well.''
Witnesses and aid workers said about 60 cars had been stuck in the tunnel after an avalanche near the southern entrance and three people died of asphyxiation from the exhaust fumes of cars, kept running to keep occupants warm.
The tunnel reopened last month after being badly damaged in Afghanistan's civil war.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS
Fact and myth about prisoners of war
Feb. 7, 2002. 01:02 AM
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1012993882074&call_page=TS_Opinion&call_pageid=968256290124&call_pagepath=News/Opinion&col=968350116695
When is a prisoner of war not a prisoner of war? Should Canada hand over Taliban and Al Qaeda captives to the United States? Why do the human rights of alleged terrorists matter at all?
To clarify the human rights issues involved in Guantanamo Bay and to debunk some of the myths of t he war on terrorism, I went straight to an expert: Alex Neve, secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada.
The highly respected human rights watchdog group takes a strictly non-partisan approach, challenging abuses in dictatorships as well as democracies, and advocating basic human rights for everyone Ñ from refugees and ethnic minorities to faith groups and political organizations to freedom fighters and criminals.
Myth: The Geneva Conventions are out of date and don't adequately address new realities of war Ñ and, therefore, can be disregarded.
Reality: "The Geneva Conventions are 50 years old and it's true that new weapons, new causes and new ways of fighting have arisen," Neve says. "However, in the 1970s, amendments were made to update the conventions Ñ amendments, I should point out, that the U.S. has not signed.
"So it's disingenuous for anyone in Canada or the U.S to now suggest that the conventions are irrelevant and shouldn't apply to the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. If they are out of date, the solution should be to amend them, not ignore them. Can you imagine if that argument was used domestically? If someone said they could break the law because they felt the Criminal Code was irrelevant?"
Myth: The Bush administration says that designating the captives in Guantanamo Bay as prisoners of war would set a dangerous precedent, allowing criminals and terrorists to escape prosecution.
Reality: "In no way do the Geneva Conventions shield people from prosecution, in fact, they are insistent that people who commit illegal acts be brought to justice," Neve says.
"The term `illegal combatant' does not exist in Geneva law. Anyone captured during an armed conflict should be assumed to be a prisoner of war and designated as such unless evidence indicates otherwise, but that's a decision that lies in the hands of a competent legal tribunal.
"If they are not PoWs, but are instead suspected of committing illegal acts, then they should be charged. Right now it appears that the men in Guantanamo Bay are being held in legal limbo. The U.S. must either designate them as prisoners of war, or lay criminal charges, otherwise there is no legal ground for them to continue to be held.
"Another big concern is that international law relies upon reciprocity. Nations will be dealt with as they deal with other nations. By not treating its prisoners according to international law, the U.S. Ñ and now Canada Ñ is putting its own soldiers at risk in future conflicts. What will happen to them if they get captured?"
Myth: Human rights groups are suggesting the world should be soft on terrorism.
Reality: "Our interest in protecting the human rights of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and our concerns about possible U.S. breaches of international law, in no way excuses or belittles what happened on Sept. 11, nor does it in any way suggest that the U.S. was at fault," Neve says. "We believe anyone who commits criminal acts or violates human rights should face justice.
"In fact, we having been speaking out against Osama bin Laden, the unchecked weapons buildup in the region, and the Taliban's human rights abuses for years and nothing was done. From the beginning, we have asserted that the Sept. 11 attacks are a devastating abuse of the most vital human right of all. We absolutely believe the people responsible must be brought to justice. Amnesty International doesn't take a position on armed conflict and we're not saying the U.S.'s response shouldn't have involved armed conflict. But we do urge that military action be a last resort and insist that any armed conflict must pay scrupulous attention to international law."
Myth: In order to protect people, some human rights and civil liberties will have to be violated.
Reality: "We really try to stress the message that it's not security versus human rights, but security and human rights," Neve says. "There can be no true security when human rights are disregarded, that will only perpetuate the cycle of fear and violence.
"Especially when dealing with opposing forces like Al Qaeda and the Taliban that have a horrible track record on human rights, it's all the more important for any response to affirm human rights, not erode them."
For more information, check out Amnesty International's website, http://www.amnesty.ca.
--------
Security tightened for treks to Mecca
February 7, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20020207-67453083.htm
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Saudi Arabia is using digital eye scanners, fingerprinting machines and other high-tech security equipment to search for terror suspects as hundreds of thousands of Muslims arrive in the country for the hajj pilgrimage this month.
The kingdom expects close to 2.5 million people this year for the annual pilgrimage, which comes amid heightened tensions in the Muslim world after the September 11 attacks on the United States and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. There are 5,000 U.S. troops stationed in Saudi Arabia.
A Saudi official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the country's entry ports are under close watch and the number of intelligence officers has been significantly increased to keep an eye out on proceedings during the hajj.
The official said authorities at King Abdul Aziz International Airport in the Red Sea port city of Jiddah, which receives 80 percent of nonresident pilgrims, have installed digital eye-scanning and fingerprinting machines to collect data on the pilgrims.
"Those suspected of being involved in terrorism activities have their names listed at all entry ports and we've installed machines that will help us detect forged passports," said Lt. Col. Ibrahim bin Saleh al-Hamdan. The scanning equipment will be used at random or on suspect individuals.
"King Abdul Aziz airport receives more than 750,000 pilgrims and we're not going to scan every single one of them," he said.
The hajj, or the pilgrimage to Mecca - birthplace of Islam's 7th-century prophet Muhammad and home of Islam's holiest shrine - is one of the pillars of the religion. Muslims who are able-bodied and can afford the journey are obliged to do it at least once in their lifetime.
The Ministry of Pilgrimage estimates that 120,000 Pakistani pilgrims - 10 percent more than last year - will make the hajj. Pakistanis represent the largest number of pilgrims; 110,000 Indians and 92,000 Iranians also are expected to attend.
The Saudi government usually does not announce the number of security forces it deploys in Mecca during the hajj, but it is believed to be in the tens of thousands.
----
D.C. students well-armed at school
By Vaishali Honawar
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
February 7, 2002
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20020207-10608872.htm
The number of assaults with deadly weapons in D.C. schools has doubled in the past four years, even though the system has spent $8 million on metal detectors, cameras and security officers trying to keep students safe.
Information obtained after The Washington Times filed an open-records request shows that between the 1997-98 and the 2000-01 school years:
•Assaults with deadly weapons shot up from 66 to 127.
•Simple assaults in the school system rose from 384 to 475.
•The number of children caught bringing concealed weapons to schools swelled from 329 to 423.
•Robberies rose from 18 to 35.
•Threats against students and staff increased from 156 to 225.
The number of incidents reported to the school system are as bad or worse than those of school systems with twice the number of students.
Last year alone, security personnel with the 68,449-student school district caught 423 students carrying concealed weapons. In Prince George's County, which has 137,299 students, 430 students were found carrying weapons. Montgomery County, with an enrollment of 136,653 students, had 235 students caught carrying weapons.
D.C. school officials, who provided the numbers for a report in The Times on school security only after a request was filed under the Freedom of Information Act, said the surge in incidents was the result of broader social problems and better reporting.
"We encourage our principals to report more now," said Patrick Fiel, chief of security for the District's public schools.
Still, reporting an incident to the school district is entirely up to a school's principal; it is not mandatory, and there are no clear rules.
"I'd love to say it is 100 percent, but it is not," said Steve G. Seleznow, chief of staff for the District's public schools. "There is a subjective element to reporting. A fight between a couple of children may be reported by one principal, but not by another."
School officials also said their numbers are not comparable with other school systems because of differences in the categories for reporting incidents.
Mr. Seleznow said the school system has made efforts, through better training of staff and increased security, to reduce the number of weapons being brought into schools. Since 1998, it has spent about $8 million on installing cameras, metal detectors and X-ray machines in all high schools and some middle schools.
"The problem is, when you try to institute these types of procedures, you have a risk of reporting higher numbers of incidents," said Mr. Seleznow, who believes the security measures have made schools much safer.
Superintendent Paul L. Vance did not return repeated calls seeking comment, but a spokesman quoted him as saying the school system "will be intensely vigilant in keeping our schools safe and putting in place programs that support" the development of students.
In his Northeast office, Mr. Fiel keeps some of the weapons caught by the metal detectors and X-ray machines: a 2-foot sword, a knife concealed in a walking stick, guns and several brass knuckles.
When it comes to reporting security incidents, Mr. Fiel said, a deadly weapon is not limited to a gun or a knife.
"If a student picks up a pencil and attacks another student, it is reported as an attack with a deadly weapon. That's the law," he said.
Mr. Fiel said security cannot control classroom behavior or the violence outside schools that sometimes finds its way in.
"I don't control the 200 gangs we deal with here or the frustrations of students," he said. Students at Anacostia Senior High School in Southeast say they see fights break out almost every day.
"Guns, knives, baseball bats you name it, they are all there," said one 12th-grader who did not want to be identified.
He said security guards sometimes searched students but didn't always catch the weapons they were carrying.
Another student said weapons were brought in through the school's back door to elude security guards and metal detectors at the front door.
The 12th-grader said he often got involved in fights himself. "I never start it, but I go in and finish it," he said.
Jeremiah Diggs, 14, and Danny Dixon, 16, said they often see students attacking each other.
"Usually, they don't need anything more than their fists," said Danny, a ninth-grader.
The baseball bats can cause serious damage. A female student who was too afraid to give her name described a fight between two students last month. "Then a third student snuck out from behind the vending machine and hit one of the students with a baseball bat," she said.
The student who was struck had to be taken to the hospital. "It looked real bad," she said.
Iris Toyer, president of Parents United for D.C. Schools, said she was worried about the culture of violence in city schools.
"It is frightening that all these weapons are around our children, but it is also frightening that children feel they need to have them either to protect themselves or to fight," she said.
----
Captives Resist U.S. Questioning
Some Progress Reported in Gaining Intelligence at Cuba Base
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35571-2002Feb6?language=printer
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- Many of the al Qaeda and Taliban captives imprisoned at the U.S. naval base here are locked in a war of wills with their American captors, resisting giving information as interrogators devise ways to get them talking, such as engaging them in discussion about the Koran, U.S. government officials said.
At the same time, U.S. questioners have begun to make progress in unearthing intelligence information from some of the alleged terrorist prisoners, especially a few of the younger ones, sources said. Government officials said the strategy is to make the detainees feel comfortable with their treatment, while applying subtle psychological pressure.
Informed government officials said that U.S. personnel are carefully observing the behavior of each of the 158 prisoners -- down to how much food they eat, and how long they pace in their cells -- and that each presents a different psychological profile.
"There are some very hardened, trained individuals who are watching us and biding their time," said a knowledgeable U.S. government official. "Others are just resisting."
The U.S. military has been interrogating 324 other prisoners in two prisons in Afghanistan, and an undetermined number from that group were being flown to Cuba yesterday aboard an Air Force C-17. Officials said most of the rest are likely to be moved here in coming months. It is unclear how officials decide on whom to move first. Of the 158 prisoners in Cuba, the largest group of about 50 are Saudi.
Both the prisoners and the U.S. guards were extremely tense in the first weeks after the first prisoners arrived Jan. 11, but the atmosphere soon eased once U.S. officials allowed the detainees to start talking, U.S. personnel said.
Many captives speak in English or their own language. But officials said they are wary that some of the most talkative and seemingly cooperative detainees are angling to lull the Americans into slipping up somehow. Officials think that while detainees may harbor fantasies of escape, the real goal of some is simply to kill or maim a guard.
"Many have received training and are observing activities such as security procedures," said Army Brig. Gen. Michael Lehnert, who runs the prison here. "Many appeared disciplined and very patient."
Some prisoners have defecated in their prison jumpsuits in what U.S. military personnel have concluded were efforts to infuriate their captors and establish their independence, sources said.
U.S. officials keep a close eye on an Australian captive named David Hicks, 26, who was arrested with al Qaeda forces late last year. A troublemaker in school, he dropped out at 14 and was rejected by the Australian military as semiliterate.
At some point he converted to Islam. On one arm is a tattoo of a cross that is covered by a tattoo showing a soldier with a gun. Hicks fought with various radical Muslim movements around the world before moving to Afghanistan to train with Osama bin Laden's followers.
U.S. officials think that despite his erratic behavior since his arrest, Hicks is acting calculatedly to find some security gap, and possibly drawing on his training by British mercenaries.
After his capture in Afghanistan, he gave some information about al Qaeda to Australian interrogators. On the flight to Cuba, he somehow slipped his wrists through his handcuffs, and military police officers had to bind his hands onto his seat with duct tape.
When he first arrived at the prison, nicknamed Camp X-Ray, Hicks screamed at guards that he wanted to kill them. But U.S. officials suspect that he was testing his captors' responses, and that the calm he presents now is strategic, as well. They note that he pays attention to the timing and procedures used in the guards' rotation, informed sources said.
U.S. officials refuse to disclose details about their interrogation of the detainees. But they privately acknowledge U.S. interrogators are likely to use every psychological gambit legally available to get the prisoners talking to their CIA, FBI and military questioners.
Psychological factors were apparently one reason for a recent change in the procedure for transporting prisoners to the interrogation center a few hundred yards away. In the early days, the prisoners were walked over. Then officials said most should be carried over on stretchers, claiming their leg shackles made the walks too time-consuming. Another reason appears to be that being carried everywhere instills the sense of submission found in an invalid or a child, government sources said.
"The idea is to slowly remove all the vestiges of [a detainee's] sense of power, so they can no longer believe they're bulletproof, and in this case they're no longer mujaheddin warriors," one experienced U.S. government interrogator said, describing interrogations generally.
The goal is to get the prisoner comfortable enough to start talking, about any subject, he said. Far from torturing the prisoners, as some human rights groups have feared would happen, some of the U.S. personnel are stroking them emotionally. Others, though, show a harsher face -- the "good cop, bad cop routine," the source said.
"The one is hard to him, while the other wants to convince him that he's his friend, like they're having a conversation over Turkish coffee in Kabul," the source said.
U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Wesam Kamhia, a Syrian-born Arabic translator for the detainees, thinks -- but isn't sure -- he can distinguish the hardened terrorists from the hapless hangers-on. The latter call him "brother," and beg approval to organize prison sports teams. "One asked, 'Can I just run?' "
"But some look at me as a traitor, since I speak the language and have this uniform on," Kamhia told Voice of America in an interview in English and Arabic that ran only overseas. "You can see they're staring you down. You can see the hatred in their eyes."
When the subject of the September attacks arises, "they pretend like they never heard of it," Kamhia said. "I can't tell if they're lying or not."
"Some said they like it here," he said. "They thank the doctors [who treat them] all the time. One said he's now in the U.S., 'land of liberty, land of freedom.' "
But Kamhia wondered whether the prisoner was acting on an agenda to try to please his captors. "I don't know what he meant by that," he said.
In any case, he said, they express few complaints about their living conditions.
"They're used to the heat," he said. "They do like the food. Some said they've never been fed like that."
----
Geneva Convention to Be Applied to Captured Taliban Fighters
New York Times
February 7, 2002
By DAVID STOUT
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/international/07CND-DETAIN.html
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 - Apparently deferring to international criticism, President Bush has decided to apply the Geneva Convention to Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan, the White House announced today.
But captured fighters from the Qaeda terrorist network will not be given Geneva Convention status, the White House said. And neither Taliban nor Al Qaeda prisoners will be regarded as prisoners of war.
The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said today's announcement would have no practical effect on the lives of the detainees, some of whom are being held at the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba.
"It will not change their material life on a day-to-day basis," Mr. Fleischer said. "They will continue to be treated well, because that's what the United States does."
Mr. Fleischer said the president made his decision because he believes deeply in the principles of the Geneva Convention.
Some critics of the administration had argued that it would be wise for the United States to confer Geneva Convention status on the detainees so that American military people might be treated humanely if they were captured, but Mr. Fleischer said that factor played no part in the president's decision.
Mr. Fleischer said Mr. Bush had decided that the Taliban detainees merited Geneva Convention status because, even though the United States never recognized the Taliban government, Afghanistan is a party to the convention.
No such status should apply to Al Qaeda members, Mr. Fleischer said. "Al Qaeda is an international terrorist group and cannot be considered a state party to the Geneva Convention," he said.
The 1949 Geneva Convention sets universal standards for the humane treatment of prisoners of war. Officially, at least, such prisoners cannot be compelled to give more than their name, rank and serial number.
Thus, the refusal to grant prisoner-of-war status to either Taliban or Al Qaeda detainees apparently leaves the detainees open to further interrogation.
At last count, there were 158 detainees at Guantánamo, with another planeload from Afghanistan expected later today.
The United States had been criticized even by countries that are its traditional allies for not formally conferring Geneva Convention status on the detainees.
Regardless of the criticism, Mr. Fleischer said the prisoners had been treated well from the outset and would continue to be treated well. "The American people can take great pride in how our military is treating these dangerous detainees," he said.
Amnesty International issued a statement expressing its dismay at today's announcement. "The Geneva Conventions apply to every one of the prisoners held at Guantnamo and those detained in Afghanistan," the organization said. "The Conventions require that when there is a dispute over a prisoner's status, a `competent tribunal' must make the final determination on a case-by-case basis. The president cannot fulfill that role,` said Vienna Colucci of Amnesty International U.S.A. "This partial compliance with the Geneva Conventions is a half-measure and continues an arrogant policy of pick and choose with regard to the laws of war."
--------
U.S. Seeks to Defuse Criticism on War Captives
February 7, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-attack.html
WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - President Bush, finding his course littered with diplomatic pitfalls after the quick military victory in Afghanistan, sought to defuse one controversy on Thursday by agreeing to apply the Geneva Convention to Taliban prisoners.
As a new group of al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners arrived from Afghanistan at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush had decided to apply the convention without formally classifying Taliban fighters as prisoners of war.
He acknowledged the decision would make no difference to the actual day-to-day treatment of the captives -- being held in outdoor chain-link enclosures -- which he described as humane.
``President Bush today has decided that the Geneva Convention will apply to the Taliban detainees but not to the al Qaeda international terrorists,'' Fleischer told reporters.
Britain, a close U.S. ally in the war on terrorism, welcomed the move but human rights groups dismissed it as a hollow word-play.
``They're stating that the Geneva Conventions apply, and in the same breath not applying them,'' said Alex Arriaga, head of government relations for Amnesty International USA.
Tom Malinowski, Human Rights Watch's Washington advocacy director, said, ``To the extent theyhad a problem on this issue yesterday, they still have a problem today.''
POVERTY SEEN AS ROOT CAUSE OF EXTREMISM
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the head of the U.N. food body made separate appeals to fight poverty and hunger in the developing world, saying this was essential in addressing the underlying causes of attacks like those on Sept. 11 in which about 3,100 people were killed.
The attacks, in which hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, sparked the U.S.-led war against Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda movement and its Taliban protectors in Afghanistan.
Iran, one of three nations dubbed the ``axis of evil'' by Bush last week in a speech on fighting terrorism, said hatred of America stretched around the world.
``American leaders are complaining 'Why does the Iranian nation hate us?''' said Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. ''It is not just the Iranian nation, but all nations all around the world which hate you, you are hated in Latin America, all over Asia and even in Europe.''
Bush also lumped Iraq and North Korea in the that axis, sparking fresh speculation that he was planning military action against Baghdad because of its refusal to abide by U.N. resolutions barring it from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
IRAQ SEES 'DARK ATMOSPHERE'
Iraqi newspapers accused the United States on Thursday of trying to thwart possible discussions between the United Nations and Baghdad on resuming weapons inspections after a three-year hiatus.
``The evil American administration will try to create a dark atmosphere during the dialogue and will try to prevent it from reaching fruitful results,'' the official al-Iraq newspaper said.
The top British diplomat in Pyongyang said he had advised North Korea not to take Bush's ``axis of evil'' remark too seriously.
``We have been saying to them you must distinguish between rhetoric and reality,'' Jim Hoare, charge d'affaires at the British Embassy in North Korea's capital, told reporters. ``You mustn't overreact to casual statements. You mustn't read too much into formal statements.''
North Korea's U.N. envoy said his nation was ready to resume talks with the United States at any time despite Bush's comment. ``As we always say, a nice word will be answered with a nice word,'' Pak Gil Yon said in an interview.
In the Philippines, where U.S. special forces are helping local troops battle guerrillas linked to bin Laden, fishermen waded chest-deep in water near the bayside U.S. Embassy to protest at the American presence. They waved placards saying ''No to U.S. Troops'' and ``U.S. imperialist No 1 terrorist,'' chanted slogans and set fire to a U.S. flag.
And ashore, in the latest of almost daily protests, about 2,000 students at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines burned a huge U.S. flag on their Manila campus.
The U.S. military campaign, launched in October and all but over by the end of December, resumed this week with heavy bombing raids over parts of eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistan border where Taliban and al Qaeda remnants are believed to be hiding, an Afghan official said.
U.S. aircraft bombed the Mafazatoo area of Gorboz district, about 12 miles to the south of the town of Khost, on Tuesday and late on Wednesday, the official in neighboring Paktia province said. He had no information about casualties.
U.S. DRONE KILLS AL QAEDA MAN
U.S. officials said a missile fired by remote control from a pilotless CIA drone on Monday night hit what was believed to be a group of senior al Qaeda members in southeastern Afghanistan, killing at least one of them.
``The central figure had a close encounter of the worst kind with a Hellfire missile,'' an official said, adding that the identity of the dead man was not yet known.
Blair, in Nigeria for talks with President Olusegun Obasanjo, made an impassioned plea to Western partners to step up African development aid to head off failed states becoming breeding grounds for terrorists.
``Politics today is global,'' he said. ``The threat of weapons of mass destruction, religious fanaticism and terror can't be escaped. There is no leafy suburb far from the reach of bad things and bad people.''
In Cairo, the director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Jacques Diouf, said poverty and hunger in the developing world were among the roots of extremism.
``The masses that can be manipulated into extremism are those who are very often subjected to poverty and to injustice,'' he told reporters at FAO's 22nd conference for Africa.
Diouf said that if the September attacks helped raise awareness of these links, it could be ``one of the outcomes from a very tragic situation that might in the future take us into the light.''
--------
Mexican Activists Denounce Shooting
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Mexico-Lawyer-Killed.html
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Activists denounced what they called a ``climate of repression'' in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez Thursday, after police shot to death a lawyer who was working on a politically sensitive murder case.
They claim that the Chihuahua state government, embarrassed by its inability to stop a string of 76 rape-murders committed here since 1993, has engaged in a campaign to silence criticism of its investigation.
Chihuahua state police said they mistook lawyer Mario Escobedo, 29, for a wanted fugitive when they followed his van and tried to pull him over late Tuesday. They said Escobedo fired two shots at the officers, who then riddled his vehicle with bullets. Escobedo died at the scene.
State Attorney General Jose Silva told a news conference that ``we regret the death of this person, who, out of confusion or error, did not stop when told to do so.''
``This has all the signs of being a crime aimed at executing a lawyer for his work in exposing the illicit means that state police use to extract confessions,'' said Chihuahua Sen. Javier Corral Jurado.
But the victim's father, Mario Escobedo Sr., told local media that he blamed the state police for his son's death, and said his son had received telephone calls threatening to kill him unless he gave up the case, in which his client is one of two suspects in the most recent eight murders.
Escobedo claimed his client was tortured into confessing to the murder of eight women whose bodies were discovered in Ciudad Juarez in November. Days before his death, Escobedo had announced he would file a criminal complaint against state officials for allegedly kidnapping and torturing his client.
Residents of Ciudad Juarez are frustrated by police investigations that quickly round up suspects and base their cases against them on confessions rather than physical evidence. After each round of arrests, the rape murders -- which have targeted young women -- have continued unabated.
Sergio Dante Almaraz, who represents the other suspect arrested in November, said he has also received telephone death threats telling him to give up his defense work.
-------- OTHER
-------- energy
EPA memo said White House energy plan 'misleading'
USA: February 7, 2002
REUTERS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/14411/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The White House energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney ignored the Environmental Protection Agency's concerns that the panel unfairly blamed environmental rules for the nation's energy problems, Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman said this week.
In a letter this week to Cheney, Waxman asked the vice president about a confidential memo from the EPA last April 27 that questioned whether the Bush administration's energy plan was truthful about the effect of environmental rules on U.S. energy supplies.
The EPA memo said that language in the White House energy plan, which was still in its draft form at the time, was "inaccurate and inappropriately implicates environmental programs as a major cause of supply constraints."
U.S. utilities, oil refineries, mining companies and other energy firms often complain that strict anti-pollution rules are too costly and cumbersome.
The EPA memo said blaming energy supply shortages on environmental regulations was "overly simplistic and not supported by the facts," "misleading," and creates a "false impression."
Some of the EPA's concerns were resolved in the final version of the energy plan, which was released by the White House several weeks later.
However, Waxman accused Cheney of making only "cosmetic" changes to the energy plan that continued to blame environmental regulations for shortages in oil and electricity supplies. Cheney is the former top executive of oilfield services company Halliburton Co .
Waxman said the latest EPA revelations prove the White House plan benefits the energy industry at the expense of the public.
"We know now that important EPA objections were rejected by the White House in favor of positions that benefit the energy industry," Waxman said.
Waxman, who has been pushing for Cheney to release records related to the task force, said because of these circumstances it was more important than ever to release the records.
"Congress and the public should have as much information as possible about who was influencing the process and why EPA believed its concerns were not being addressed," Cheney said.
----
AES to Dump Its Weakest Plants
Sale of Assets Could Raise Cash Reserve by $1 Billion
By Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36165-2002Feb6?language=printer
AES Corp. plans to sell as much as $1 billion worth of power plants, executives said yesterday as they offered brutal assessments of some of the company's less successful projects and explained plans to turn them around.
At a meeting with analysts and investors yesterday in Florida, officials of the Arlington-based company said they would soon unload between $500 million and $1 billion worth of assets to raise cash. AES is the latest of several U.S. energy companies that plan to build cash reserves as energy prices drop.
AES owns all or part of 181 operations, mostly power plants and electricity-distribution facilities, around the world. The company will look carefully at which ones are performing the worst and ought be sold or closed, executives said. AES has $36 billion worth of assets.
"We're just kind of tired of having businesses around that can't win," AES Chairman Roger W. Sant said. "We don't like having a car on the track that can't win the race."
Sant said AES, which is known for giving managers lots of leeway to run their far-flung divisions, has tightened control a notch, at least for those units deemed to be underperforming.
"When businesses are defined as underperformers, they are to submit a new business plan that will undergo rigorous methodology," Sant said, referring to units within the company.
The developments came a day after AES reported that its earnings fell 81 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the fourth quarter of 2000.
AES shares lost 14 percent of their value yesterday, closing down $1.62 at $9.90 a share. The firm's stock traded as high as $70 a share in late 2000.
In their presentation to analysts, AES executives were specific in describing the underperforming businesses that it's trying to turn around.
They singled out problems in South America. Discussing Sul, an energy distribution company in Brazil with 890,000 customers, Sant said: "This is a great business. We really want the business. But we paid too much for it."
On Uruguaiana, a power plant: "There's a great transmission line taking power to parts of Brazil, but we didn't do a very good job of working out the details. It's a 600-megawatt plant that has only 500 megawatts of transmission capacity available."
Sant said AES would sell or close such operations if it cannot make them more profitable by the end of 2003.
-------- imf / world bank
IMF's Stony Silence On Austerity Plans Worries Argentina
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2002; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36229-2002Feb6?language=printer
BUENOS AIRES, Feb. 6 -- With the Argentine economy heading toward gridlock, the government voiced frustration today at the apparent coolness of the International Monetary Fund toward the country's efforts to obtain emergency loans.
Economy Minister Jorge Remes Lenicov told reporters that "there should have been a stronger reply" from the IMF to the raft of monetary and budgetary plans the government has unveiled this week. The IMF, which usually volunteers praise for a government when it approves of its policies, has maintained a stony silence concerning most of Argentina's recent moves.
In another sign of the gulf separating Washington and Buenos Aires, John Taylor, the U.S. Treasury undersecretary for international affairs, told a congressional hearing that the Bush administration still expects Argentina to implement some politically painful measures to qualify for an international loan.
The verbal jousting heralds a game of chicken that appears to be developing over international aid to Argentina. The IMF and the Bush administration, the fund's dominant member government, are insisting that Buenos Aires adopt policies that will put the country's ravaged economy on a "sustainable" path to recovery, lest a new IMF loan go for naught as previous ones did. But failing to come through with help risks pushing Latin America's third-largest economy into total collapse, with unpredictable consequences for markets and democracy in the region.
The economy, already in its fourth year of recession, is showing signs of grinding to a halt because of the impact of the government's decision in late December to default on its $142 billion debt and abandon the peg linking the peso to the dollar. With the nation's creditworthiness in tatters, Argentine manufacturers cannot obtain the dollars they need from foreign lenders to import raw materials and parts, and some factories have been forced to shut down.
The auto industry has been especially hard hit. Production in January sank to about a third of the prior year's level, an industry association said this week.
Spending by consumers is drying up because they cannot obtain access to their bank deposits, which are frozen under a government order instituted late last year to stop a run on the banks. Another factor paralyzing economic activity came following the government's announcement Sunday that it planned to allow the peso to float freely. Fearful of a panicky sell-off, authorities temporarily prohibited banks and foreign exchange houses from trading pesos for other currencies, a ban that today was extended until Monday.
Although a sizable IMF loan could help restore a sense of stability and badly needed funds to the cash-starved economy, IMF officials are unhappy about some of the government's policies. They are especially fearful that the banking system will be unable to revive if the government goes through with plans to protect both bank depositors and borrowers from losses stemming from the peso devaluation.
Taylor, while promising Bush administration backing for sound Argentine policies, made clear that Washington has yet another concern -- the ability of Argentina's provinces to spend central government revenue without imposing taxes themselves. This system is a major reason for Argentina's chronic budget deficits, but changing it has proved almost impossible politically because the poorest provinces, which depend on the largess, are heavily represented in the Senate.
-------- activists
Activist Granted Retrial in Egypt
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 7, 2002; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36234-2002Feb6?language=printer
CAIRO, Feb. 6 -- Egypt's highest appeals court today overturned the conviction of an Egyptian American sociologist who was accused of damaging the country's reputation and of other offenses related to his human rights campaigning.
The ruling means the sociologist and political activist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, could be released from prison as early as Thursday. It was greeted with relief by his friends and colleagues, who had criticized the conviction and seven-year sentence as politically motivated.
The Court of Cassation ruled that Ibrahim and 26 other employees of the liberal Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies must be retried by the State Security Court, which convicted them last spring. The grounds for the decision were not made public, and Ibrahim, 63, could be convicted again and sent back to prison. But the fact that the court ordered him and the others released in the meantime signaled to supporters that the ordeal may be over.
The high court could specify its reasons for overturning the conviction at a later date, and it may set guidelines for any new trial. The prosecutor will then decide whether to pursue the matter.
Ibrahim and others at the center were arrested a year and a half ago on charges that included forging election ballots and embezzling European Union grant funds, an allegation that mystified EU auditors.
The Ibn Khaldun Center had been active in voter-education and literacy drives. After elections in 1995, it reported that President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party used violence and intimidation to maintain its parliamentary majority. The arrests came as Ibrahim, who was educated in the United States and carries a U.S. passport, and the center were preparing to monitor Egypt's fall 2000 parliamentary elections.
--------
Israeli Peace Camp Advocates Pullout
February 7, 2002
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Dispirited and directionless for a year, Israel's peace movement hit the streets Thursday with a campaign whose new twist is a call for unilateral withdrawal from some or most of the lands claimed by the Palestinians.
Lawmakers and activists from dovish groups -- including the Labor Party, whose leaders are part of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's center-right government -- gathered at a busy Tel Aviv intersection to persuade rush-hour drivers that Israel should quit the West Bank and Gaza, areas occupied in the 1967 Mideast war.
``The territories are bad for us! Think of your kids,'' urged Israeli-Arab lawmaker Husnieh Jabara, offering a bumper sticker that read ``Get out of the territories'' to a 50-ish driver waiting at the light. ``You're bad for us!'' countered the man, rejecting the sticker. ``The territories protect my kids.''
Others were more receptive. One group of youths in a white pickup truck accepted a banner and began to shout ``Get out of the territories!'' at other drivers, as dovish opposition leader Yossi Sarid observed with evident satisfaction.
Activists hope to take the campaign to intersections across the country and plan a large rally in Tel Aviv next week -- their most ambitious effort since Israeli-Palestinian fighting erupted in September 2000.
In the past, the peace camp has focused on pressing negotiations between the two sides and on the idea of the so-called land-for-peace strategy. Under that premise, which formed the basis for the 1990s peace process, Israel would turn over land in the West Bank and Gaza Strip if it got peace in return.
But Israeli peaceniks' message has been somewhat muddled since the Palestinians a year ago rejected the previous government's proposals for a Palestinian state in almost all of the West Bank and Gaza with a foothold in Jerusalem. The Palestinians held out for more land and a ``right of return'' to Israel for millions of war refugees -- an idea that is anathema to the vast majority of Israelis.
Sarid said Thursday that there should be another attempt at negotiations -- but more and more of his colleagues are turning to the unilateral pullout idea, which has been adopted by iconic figures in the peace camp such as renowned authors Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua.
``There is no hope for an agreement soon with the Palestinians,'' wrote Yehoshua on Thursday in the Haaretz newspaper. ``The only way to somewhat calm the situation and create the foundation for a future agreement is a unilateral separation carried out by Israel, with the tacit agreement of the Palestinians.''
Tsali Reshef, a Labor Party lawmaker and Peace Now leader who was handing out stickers Thursday, had specific recommendations: pull out of the Gaza Strip immediately and dismantle the settlements where some 7,000 Israelis live amid more than a million Palestinians.
Pulling out is not risky, he said. ``Nothing (bad) will happen, and it will send the right message to the Palestinians.''
Many disagree -- including not only the hard-line Sharon, but key members of the Labor Party.
``It's stupid defeatism,'' said Labor's Ephraim Sneh, who serves as transport minister in Sharon's broad-based government. ``In the Middle East, whoever runs away will continue to be pursued ... If you leave difficult places, they will also want Tel Aviv.''
Still, polls suggest very strong support for a unilateral pullout even as support grows for the right -- a paradox that seems to reflect confusion and dissatisfaction with the grind of violence that has killed 918 people on the Palestinian side and 260 people on the Israeli side over the last 16 months.
A week ago, scores of reserve soldiers sparked heated debate by signing a letter in which they said they would refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza where, they said, they were being asked to ``dominate, expel, starve and humiliate'' Palestinians.
Palestinians have mixed reactions to the unilateral pullout idea.
Many fear partial pullouts would divide the land they seek into cantons surrounded by Israel and give Israelis the illusion that the problem has been solved. Most welcome a pullout, as long as it is complete.
``We think that the shortest way to achieve peace and security in this area is (an) Israeli withdrawal to the borders of the 4th of June, 1967,'' an exit from all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat.
-------
VERMONT DEFEATS PRO-STAR WARS RESOLUTION
From: "Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space" <globalnet@mindspring.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2002
Vermont Peace & Justice Center, Burlington
Update on the Vermont - National Missile Defense Resolution- WE WON!
On Wednesday January 30, Vermont's Housing, General, and Military Affairs Committee heard testimony AGAINST H.R. 32. This resolution proposed that Vermont should urge the US government to implement a national missile defense system. Expert witnesses from around the country testified before the committee, by phone & in person, about the excessive costs, global destabilization, technical problems, and institutionalized greed that is behind furthering National Missile Defense plans. The committee heard only one day of testimony against the resolution and voted 11- 0 to kill the bill. Vermont made a good choice. A big thanks goes to all of you who called your representative on this issue. Our voices were heard!
Around the country resolutions similar to HR 32 are popping up. We must support each other and help our neighbors defeat these dangerous resolutions.
Kimberly Ead Burlington
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 90083
Gainesville, FL 32607
(352) 337-9274
http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!